


A Child of the Stones

by AnOutlandishFanfic



Series: A Child of the Stones [1]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-03-04 23:47:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 39,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13375626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOutlandishFanfic/pseuds/AnOutlandishFanfic
Summary: This fic is an AU where Faith lives and is named after her maternal grandmother, Julia Beauchamp.





	1. L'Hopital

August 21st, 1744; Paris, France.  
Claire.

I could see nothing… hear nothing… but I felt everything.

I could feel every contraction tearing thru my womb, each one bringing my baby closer to both birth and death. I could feel the intense pressure of her body against my hips. I could feel the hands invade me, guiding and pulling. I could feel the exact moment that she was born, the very instant her body was separated from mine. It was too early. The baby would be small, too small. She was not ready to fight for her life and I could no longer fight for her.

The darkness echoed around me. I was cold, so terribly cold.

Where is my baby?

My soul shuddered as I searched for her, here in the darkness of death, but couldn’t find her.

Where is my baby?

No. She wasn’t here. I was alone.

Alone.

I was leaving my child alone in the world, without a mother.

A faint, yellow glow appeared around the edges of my vision as the thought flickered thru what was left of my mind and came to rest in my heart. It resonated with a dull hum, slowly bringing the weary organ back to life. The feeling of pain returned to me, knocking the air from my lungs.

I couldn’t leave her, but how could I live without him?

My chest heaved and fell, painfully gathering a shallow gasp of air. I could begin make out the movement around me now. Faces moved in and out and hovered above me. Their lips moved, but I heard no sound. I turned my head, desperately searching for my baby. Something was holding me down, I couldn’t move. Single words began to float down to me. They were detached, disjointed from all context, and almost void of meaning: much, here, still, now, come.

Then, like leaves piling up in the wind, they started to connect.

Stop bleeding. Found heartbeat. Not breathing.

My baby wasn’t breathing.

The murky images above my head began to swim and the darkness threatened to overtake me. I could feel my lips part and a sound from deep within me escaped. Warm hands brushed my cheeks in response, a hushing sound tickling my ears.

No, I will not be silent. I will not be still. My baby needs me.

I turned my head away from the stranger’s hands and finally found her. A lone figure stood just out of my reach, facing me. The figure was covered in blood, holding a small bundle. It noticed me watching and turned away quickly.

“Please. I need my baby.” My mouth moved, forming words, but no sound came out. I turned my head back to face whoever was above me, begging them with my eyes and tried again, “My baby.”

The face bent closer, speaking into my ear, “Say again.”

“I need my baby,” I spoke painfully slow, my voice garbled and strange.

The face spoke again, but I couldn’t understand her words. I tried to grab hold of whoever was touching me, to make them give me my baby. My hands caught hold of something and I pulled it towards me.

In an instant, the impending darkness crashed down around me; leaving me completely and utterly alone.

My baby was dead and so, too, was I.


	2. Fevered Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire meets her daughter for the first time and her fever begins.

August 21st, 1744; Paris, France.  
Claire.

I floated in the darkness between life and death, adrift from everything I knew, everyone I loved. I was weightless, soulless, and completely empty. I had no power to return to life or to welcome death.

Time passed. I knew it had, I could feel it brush against my skin as it moved, but I didn’t know how long I stayed like this. It felt as though I had been here forever, like I had spent an eternity without a tether. Yet, somehow I knew it hadn’t been long. I could remember the weight of love that was my anchor. I could remember the feeling of two souls joined as one, his and mine.

I looked for him. I looked for the man who had consumed me so completely, the one whom my soul loved; but he wasn’t there. No one was there. I was alone.

But then I heard something. The noise was faint, so quiet I almost missed it.

Then it grew. The sound came from all around me, making me feel dizzy and warm.

It was a sound I had heard before. I knew what it was, but I couldn’t put a name to it. Confusion bubbled up inside me as I struggled to remember what it was. I knew the sound was calling me, asking me to do something, but what?

I tried to move, in any direction, but failed. I flung out my arms, hoping to catch hold of something. My hands pawed at the air around me and I kicked furiously, trying to gain traction.

A baby.

That was it. That was the sound. It was a baby crying.

My baby.

Suddenly, I was struck with a beam of blinding, white light. I tried to shield my eyes, but the light had expanded and completely surrounded me. I couldn’t escape it. I blinked rapidly, the pain of the sudden change easing. I still couldn’t see anything. Was there anything to be seen in this place?

The cry was becoming more distinct now, more specific. My brain began to think for itself again. It told me the cry was coming from a newborn, only a few hours old.

I knew it was my baby. I knew it without any doubt. I had to find her.

The child grew more urgent, the tone of it’s cry changing. It came from only one direction now, as well, and I turned towards it. She needed me. She needed me now.

This new wail made the blood surge thru my veins. I could feel my body rise to answer her call. I could move now. My feet connected with something beneath me and I set off at a run. The noise came closer and closer until it seemed to be coming from right in front of me.

“You have a daughter, ma chere.” Mother Hildegard’s voice floated above me.

Where? Where is she? Where is my baby?

I frantically looked around, but was met with absolutely nothing. Blank, white space surrounded me in every direction. I sank to my knees and tipped my head back, staring into the empty void above me. I reached out my arms as if asking the void itself my question: Where is my baby?

Suddenly, I could feel something brush against my fingertips.

It was my baby, it was her. I could feel her. I was touching my baby. I inched forward on my knees, arms still outstretched ahead of me, trying to find her. My fingers brushed the top of her head.

I’m here, my love, mama’s here. Please don’t cry, my soul whispered.

She stopped crying the moment we touched. She was slightly damp, somewhat sticky. I could feel the warmth of her skin as I traced the curve of her cheek. My hand came to rest on bundle of blankets she was wrapped in. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, her heart beating in rhythm. I moved my other hand to cup the back of her head. Oh God, she was so small!

A fog rose up from the ground beneath me, somehow giving everything dimension as the otherworldly light passed thru it. I could see her in silhouette now, the first glimpse of my precious daughter. My eyes burned with unshed tears and I let them fall. Blinking heavily, I began to see flashes of color. I could see a little bit more with every blink, and soon I could see everything completely.

Mother Hildegard laid her on my chest and I held my baby for the very first time.

My arms curled around her tiny body as I cradled her, my lips brushing the crown of her head. “Hello, darling.” I murmured. “I love you so.”

She blinked up at me with deep blue eyes, brow furrowed. What little hair she had was a brilliant auburn, the swirls matted to her head. Her tiny rosebud lips puckered as she rubbed her face against my skin, eagerly rooting for my breast.

Mother Hildegard helped me position her, placing pillows strategically for support. I studied every tiny detail about her, the vision of nursing my baby permanently etched in my mind. I caressed the porcelain skin of her cheek with my thumb as she ate. I smiled as I traced her arched brows and saw the Fraser slant to her eyes, more prominent now that they were closed.

The smile froze on my lips as I remembered what had happened, why I had been in the empty void.

“Where is Jamie?” I asked, seeing in my mind the duel in the forest as clearly as I saw our child.

Mother Hildegard slowly shook her head, “There’s been no word, ma chere.”

My cheeks burned as I thought of what he had done. What he had chosen over me, over the life and safety of his child. He had not been beside me when I needed him most. He was not here to welcome his own flesh and blood into the world.

I began to rock back and forth, trying to dispel the looming weight of Jamie’s betrayal. The baby’s hand relaxed on my breast, her mouth separating with a final swallow. I brought her to my shoulder, gently patting her back, and started to hum.

Oh I do like to be beside the sea…

“What will you name her?” Mother Hildegard asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“Julia.” I said slowly, feeling the name roll of my tongue. “Julia Ellen Fraser.”

...

I could feel the infection begin to take hold inside me. My head spun, my vision blurred. I was thirsty, but couldn’t keep anything down. My skin was on fire one minute and I shivered with cold the next.

They wouldn’t let me nurse Julia any more, barely let me touch her. Soon, they stopped bringing her to me all together. Something was wrong. They knew something, saw something that they weren’t telling me. I begged over and over in my delirium for them to bring her to me.

“Where is my baby? I need my baby!”

Mother Hildegard and the other sisters tried to comfort me. They spoke of the woman they had found to be her wet nurse, a healthy and respectable mother with more milk than her baby needed. They told me she was safe, that she was content.

Safe? Content? How could an infant be either of those things without her mother?

Unless…

No, she couldn’t be dead.

The cold paralysis of dread started at my toes, working its way to my heart. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. I lay there and stared up at the ceiling, eyes unblinking.

She can’t be dead.

“Where is my baby? I need my baby,” my voice sounded remote and distant.

Sister Angelique repeated the same words they had been telling me all day: safe, content, cared for. Her voice was calm, irritatingly so.

But she isn’t here with me. I need her here with me. Bring her here to me.

I struggled to move, to go and find her. I managed to get to a sitting position before their arms pushed me back and held me down. I fought them. I fought the rising tide of oblivion, the urge to weep.

But I wasn’t strong enough.

I hadn’t been strong enough to stop Jamie. I wasn’t strong enough to keep our child alive. Why did I think I could be strong enough to fight the infection raging thru my body?

Then and there, I stopped fighting. I let the fever overtake me.

***

I looked around me and tried to figure out where I was. I thought I might be in a forest, but didn’t recognize it as any I had ever saw in before.

The trees were strange. The bark was smooth and had an almost polished shine to them. The ground was clear of any sort of undergrowth, making the forest seem empty. It was quiet, without any noise of woodland creatures.

I stepped around a tree and walked straight into Frank. We both stumbled and he held me at arms length, staring at me. It wasn’t Black Jack Randall or even his brother Alex looking back at me, but Frank.

“Where on earth have you –“ he started to ask, but was interrupted by a loud, Gaelic battle cry behind me.

I turned to see a flash of steel and a whirl of plaid. Jamie’s hair gleamed in the sunlight as he fought a man in uniform. I started towards them, but Frank pulled me back.

“Wait, where are you going?” he asked frantically.

“I have to stop him!” I answered as I yanked my arm free and ran towards the clearing. Something changed with every step I took. It was harder to move, but the ground hadn’t changed. I had changed.

I watched and felt my womb come alive with the child I carried. I sank to my knees as seven months of growth happened in approximately sixty seconds. It felt like I was being torn apart from the within as my vital organs made room for the sudden intruder. I was promptly sick to my stomach, narrowly missing Frank’s shoes as came up beside me.

“Are you quite alright, Claire?” He dodged the projectile vomit and knelt in front of me, eyes full of concern.

“No,” I groaned and tried to stand, “I’m bloody not alright.”

Frank grabbed hold of my arm and helped me to my feet. I tried to step around him, but he stopped me. “Claire, what the hell is going on? Who are these people?”

I shook my head and pushed past him, “I’ll explain later, I promise.”

The pressure in my abdomen continued to grow as I moved towards the clearing. They where circling each other now. Sizing the other up, like wolves. Each had their blade in hand, ready to strike.

A strong contraction made its intentions clear as I stepped out of the woods. Cradling my abdomen, I shouted, “Stop!”

The two men stared at me as I hobbled towards them, suddenly collapsing into Jamie’s arms. Another contraction came right on the heels of the first and I writhed in pain. He picked me up, tenderly cradling me in his arms, and brought me back to the edge of the clearing.

Leaning me against the base of a large tree, he brushed the hair from my face and whispered, “Much, mo nighean donn. Dinna fash, I’m here.”

A shadow fell over my face and I looked up to see Black Jack Randall raise his sword above Jamie’s head. Seeing it too, Jamie spun around and blocked the blow with his own blade. The two moved to better footing and battled on as yet another contraction tore thru me.

I cried out and Frank was suddenly beside me.

“Tell me what you need,” he insisted.

“Jamie,” I panted, “I need Jamie.”

With an odd expression, he stood and pulled a small pistol from his belt. “Which one’s Jamie?”

“The bloody Scot!” I shouted up at him. I could feel the child shift within me, moving into the birth canal with each contraction. The pressure was unbearable and I dug my heels into the ground, pushing back against the tree.

“He seems a bit preoccupied with the chap who’s trying to kill him at the moment, are you sure I can’t help?” He responded, watching the duel unfold. I kicked him in the ankle and he turned to smile down at me sheepishly. “Childbirth seems a trifle easier than mortal combat.”

“Speak for yourself,” I hissed thru my teeth.

He turned to start towards the men, when suddenly a bright red splash of blood formed between his shoulder blades. He crumpled to the ground at my feet, gasping. I could see Jamie standing over Black Jack Randall, sword bloody, and I knew that with a single stroke he had killed them both.

I screamed, as Frank bled to death in front of me. I somehow leaned forward and grabbed hold of his hand. Blood trailed out mouth as he said, “I love you, Claire.” Another contraction hit just as he took his final breath, a smile still on his lips. A noise rose up from deep within me, voicing not only my physical pain but the deep emotional trauma of watching a loved one die.

I could form no words as Jamie ran to me. What do you say to the man who had just murdered your husband in cold blood in front of you, but whose child you would give birth to in a matter of minutes?

I stared up at him, unblinking, as I felt the overwhelming urge to push.

Jamie turned completely white as he realized what I was doing. “Ye canna do that, Sassenach.”

“I don’t think you have much say in the matter,” I spat back when I could speak again.

“But ye surely canna have the bairn here?”

I laughed sardonically, “I can and it seems that I am.”

A fresh contraction started to gain momentum and I dropped Frank’s hand, grabbing onto Jamie’s shirt with both fists. He stared down at me completely terrified. “I dinna ken what to do.”

Then it’s a good thing I’m the one doing it.

He gingerly guided me from my knees into a sort of seated, squatting position against the tree, placing his plaid beneath me. He started to back away, but I yanked him towards me.

“Don’t you dare retreat, soldier.” I threatened, arching with the force of the contraction.

“Never, Sassenach,” he said, gazing confidently into my eyes. He did flinch, however, when my waters broke onto his feet about five seconds later. “That’s good, aye?”

I responded by pulling my skirts above my knees, moaning at the sudden change in pressure. He peeked and I think he would have fallen over backwards if I hadn’t been holding onto him for dear life, my weight keeping him upright.

I could feel the baby begin to crown and I dug my fingers into Jamie’s arms. His eyes couldn’t decide where to watch, my face or the progress down below. I pulled his head against mine as I pushed with all of my might, making the decision for him.

“Talk to me, Jamie.” I begged, feeling uneasy about what my body was doing.

He did so instantly, speaking to me in Gaelic. His voice was calm, but thick with emotion. It worked. I could feel my anxiety drain away as my body positioned itself to its job. My base instincts took over in a mighty rush. Jamie seemed to know what to do too. Maybe it was the years spent in the stables; maybe it was his trust in me. I didn’t know and I didn’t ask.

I pushed, and pushed, and pushed again as we worked together to bring our child into the world. I panted against him as he brought my hand down between my legs, brushing my fingers against the top of the baby’s head.

“She’s almost here, Claire.” Jamie said in awe.

“She’s so soft,” I murmured before another surging urge to push once again washed over me.

“’S math a rinn thu, mo chridhe,” came Jamie’s encouragement as the baby’s head was delivered.

With a final heave, I felt the baby slip into the world. I reached out my arms, begging Jamie to hand the baby to me. He stared down at his hands for what seemed like an eternity and then looked up at me.

“What?” I asked, panicking. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“She’s gone,” Jamie’s voice was barely above a whisper.

You killed her. Just like Frank.

I swallowed the thought, “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

“I mean she’s gone, Claire! She just disappeared, there is no baby!” Jamie pushed away from me, looking completely terrified.

She’s gone. There is no baby.

I woke with a sudden jolt, face to face with Master Raymond.

There had been a baby, but she was indeed gone and Jamie had killed her.


	3. Departure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire leaves L'Hopital and struggles with the absence of Jamie.

I was not Master Raymond’s only patient in L’Hôpital that night.

He leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Votre petit guerrier sera bientôt bien.”

“My what?” I asked. I was unsure if the remaining vestiges of fever clouded my mind or if I was supposed to know what on earth he was referring to.

“Your daughter, Madonna,” Master Raymond supplied. “That is your daughter with the flaming hair and the voice that could raise any army, yes?”

Your little warrior will be well soon.

My heart began to clatter in my chest, “She’s alive?”

“Ne vous en faites pas, Madonna. Her heart is weak, but her spirit is strong.”

Don’t worry.

His hands began to travel my body. He pressed, massaged, and drew every fragment of infection from within me. His voice was doing the same to my soul.

“It is this strength and your own protection that will fight the battles for her, until little body is ready. What name have you given her?”

“Julia,” I murmured, under his spell. “Her name is Julia.”

The smile was evident in his voice as he continued, “C’est magnifique, a strong, noble name. She will grow in your likeness, Madonna, both in outward appearance and innermost soul. Juliette will always be the child of your heart.”

I smiled dreamily; she had always been the child of my heart. We were forever linked, she and I, by more than the blood we shared and the months I had carried her within me. It was somehow more than just the bond of mother and child. I couldn’t put words to the feeling, but knew deep within my soul that this was different.

“She will be a healer like you, Madonna, but not of body and bone. Her great capacity to love will mend many a broken heart and fractured soul, starting with your own.”

***

I awoke the next morning to find Sister Angelique sitting in a chair next to my bed, holding Julia. The sister positively glowed with excitement.

“C’est un miracle!” she exclaimed. “The both of you restored to such health!”

I couldn’t help but agree as I held my daughter. My nurse’s brain noted her sunken cheeks and unhealthy pallor, but my heart rejoiced that she was alive She had lost weight while I had been sick, weight she couldn’t afford to loose, but had settled into nursing like she had been doing it for months. Master Raymond had somehow managed to not only rid my body of infection, but also had revived my flow and reversed any detriment that not nursing for three days had created.

There is something about the feeling of a child sleeping in your arms that lends to introspection. My heart had somewhat calmed now that I was able to hold my child, but it was still shattered into thousands of tiny pieces. Waves of depression washed over me, smoothing the hard edges of thoughts and emotions into indifferent chaos.

Mother Hildegard appeared at the end of my bed with an announcement some time later.

“You have a visitor, ma chere.” I must have turned pale, for she quickly added, ”Should I send him away?”

Him.

If my heart had still been in my chest cavity, it seemed to be racing along quite nicely in the pit of my stomach, I would have sworn she had just thrust a knife into it.

“Who,” I stammered, swallowing past a suddenly dry mouth. “Who is it?”

“He said his name is Fergus. He has accompanied you here before, yes?”

A mixture of relief and resignation bubbled up inside me.

“Yes.” One word, that was all I could manage.

Why had he come? Would he have news of Jamie?

Mother Hildegard came to the side of the bed, helping me adjust the robe I wore into a semblance of modesty. Julia had come un-swaddled beside me and I welcomed the distraction of rearranging her wrappings. Having deemed us appropriate for company, Mother Hildegard left to retrieve Fergus from the corridor.

I watched the duo make their way towards me. Fergus trailed a few paces behind the matronly figure, pale and anxious. His eyes flicked from side to side and suddenly met mine. His countenance relaxed slightly and he waggled the small bouquet of flowers in his hands.

“For you and l’enfant, m’lady.” He offered them to me, bowing low, when he neared the bed.

“Thank you, Fergus. They’re lovely.” I tried to smile and took them from him.

His hands, now without an anchor, fidgeted restlessly as he told me of the progress in the nursery. The room was ready for our arrival, whenever Mother Hildegard deemed us healthy enough to return home. He prattled on about ribbons and embroidered caps until I took his hand in mine.

“Tell me what’s happened, Fergus. Where is Jamie?”

I felt him stiffen, but he did so without hesitation, gaze fixated on the floor. 

“In the Bastille, m’lady.”

***

The carriage bumped along the Parisian streets, carrying me ever closer to the home I had shared with Jamie. I dreaded going back to that house. I didn’t want to hear the servant’s whispered gossip about Jamie’s imprisonment, their supposed reasons for my absence, our child’s ill health. I didn’t want to be in the room that we had shared, the bed where we had dreamed of our child’s future together.

Louise had opened her country home to us. The offer was tempting: to escape from reality in the quiet of the French countryside. The unfamiliar surroundings wouldn’t remind me of him, but the prospect being inundated with of dozens of unknown servants made me realize I wanted, or rather needed, Magnus and Suzette’s protection.

They would keep anyone and anything I didn’t want to face away from me, without question, without hesitation. They would ensure that no one would interfere in my care for Julia, that her needs were met before all else. It was this knowledge that kept me from fleeing Paris and all that was familiar, the only reason I wouldn’t fall apart completely when I stepped over the threshold.

***

Our first night at home had been a rather sleepless one.

Julia had quite loudly informed anyone within earshot exactly what she thought of being anywhere but in my arms, and flatly refused to sleep longer than thirty minutes at a time. This, combined with my tumultuous emotions, made for a long night. We finally fell asleep as dawn began to welcome the new day and didn’t waken until well into the morning.

Suzette had just left the room after delivering a hot pot of tea and the promise of breakfast. I could hear her greet Fergus in the passageway outside my door.

“How is l’enfant this morning, Suzette? Does she or m’lady need anything from the market? I could go at once,” He responded eagerly.

The faithful servant laughed, “Non, mon loup, they need nothing but each other.”

They need nothing but each other.

Arguably, I was the only thing Julia needed outside of a clean nappy, but was she really the only thing I needed?

I needed her. I couldn’t even begin to put words to how much I needed this child. It was her heartbeat that kept me alive, not my own. I had no appetite, but ate only so that I could provide for her. She was now the first thought of the morning and the last of the evening.

No. There was something, someone else I needed more than I needed my daughter.

I ached for him with every fiber of my being, to the core of my soul. I could not be whole without him and yet, I could not speak of him to Julia. I couldn’t tell her that her daddy loved her more than anything in the world, because he didn’t.

He had loved his pride far more than his wife and child.


	4. Croodle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire, Julia, and Fergus attempt to regain a normal life in Paris.

September 1744; Paris, France  
Claire.

Julia lay asleep in my arms in what was quickly becoming her signature-sleeping pose: right thumb in her mouth, left hand clasping her ear. It had taken well over two hours, but Julia was now fed, changed, swaddled, comforted, and finally asleep. She had firm opinions on how she liked to be swaddled and was not afraid to let me know when I didn’t quite get it right. I was getting the hang of it, as was Suzette, but no one could do it quite like Mémé Hélène.

Somewhere in her mid-seventies, an impressive feat in this century, she was a force to be reckoned with. She was stooped and thoroughly wrinkled with a smile that could turn winter to spring in an instant. There were conflicting stories of how Mémé Hélène had come to be a part of Jared’s household, but the main consensus was that she had simply always been. She was grandmother to all and could charm the socks off the most hardened criminal. I swore she knew some sort of secret infant language. She always knew what to try when I couldn’t get Julia to stop fussing, which was often.

Julia didn’t frequently outright cry, she reserved that for when she was most annoyed with me in the wee hours of the morning, but she was rarely content. She had a clear, shrill little voice and I often wished she could just tell me what she needed. Of course, she couldn’t yet, and I was left to play the never ending, nerve wracking game of “eat, sleep, or nappy.” Eating, sleeping, and making a mess of her nappy was really all Julia did at the ripe old age of one month.

Louise had visited a week or so after we returned home, twittering on and on about how much the baby had grown and changed since she had seen her last at L’Hopital, how healthy the baby looked. This was a lie, and we both knew it. Louise’s child had grown within her, but my child had only recently stopped loosing weight. Julia’s skin lacked the healthy pallor she should have by now, her hands and feet were often slightly blue.

With Mémé Hélène’s tutelage, Julia and I had a feeding routine that had all but forced her to gain weight. She had us up at all hours of the night, even waking the baby up to nurse. It had worked. Julia’s cheekbones were starting to recede; her little arms and legs growing stronger and more active.

I tipped my head back, against the solid hardwood of the headboard. We had placed a small, narrow bed in the nursery and it was worth its weight in gold. I spent many hours in this bed, most often with Julia. I could count on one hand the number of times I had slept in the bed I had shared with Jamie since returning home. It was too large, too haunting, too menacing without him. This bed was small and cozy; barely long enough for me to stretch out length-wise on it. I didn’t care, as I was usually curled up around Julia.

My eyes burned with fatigue as I stared up at the dark ceiling. It was well past midnight, the few candles that were lit burned low. I hated these moments of emptiness. The darkness threatened to swallow me whole as my mind found its way back to Jamie. I could push him away in the daylight. I could let the hatred and betrayal keep my mind from dwelling on him.

But here, alone with our daughter in a dark nursery, I couldn’t. I was helpless to do anything but love him. The fear and longing threatened to strangle me. I brushed a teardrop from my chin, not wanting it to fall on Julia, but made no effort to hold back my tears.

The sound was quiet at first, but it was clearly a child crying. I instinctively looked down at Julia, even though it was obviously wasn’t her, and found her still fast asleep. There weren’t any other children in the house except…

Fergus.


	5. Nighean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie returns and meets Julia for the first time.

October 7th, 1744; Paris, France  
Claire.

“Was it a boy or a girl?” 

His question froze the blood in my veins.

Was? He thought Julia was dead.

Someone had told him our child had not lived.

I struggled to breathe. My heart raced as it remembered the fevered nights when I, too, had thought our daughter to be forever lost. The room seemed to spin around me and I tried desperately to focus on a solid point.

The window. A breeze rustled the leaves on the tree just outside the widow.

I turned my gaze away from the buttons on Jamie’s jacket and locked onto the nearest branch, slowly grounding myself. I was tempted to squeeze my eyes shut, to close off the world around me, but I knew I would only see the blood. Julia’s blood. My blood. Streams of it flowing off the operating table and pooling onto the floor of L’Hopital. It was the nightmare that haunted me nearly every night since returning home. I would wake soaked in the sweat of an interminable fever and trembling like the leaves outside the window.

I had seen enough blood in my lifetime that, in and of itself, blood did not bother me. I’ve been covered in someone else’s and not batted an eye. It was a daily occurrence on the front lines of war. I was trained to stop it, to fix whatever problem had caused the life-giving liquid to leave the body. But sometimes I couldn’t. 

Sometimes I couldn’t save them, no matter how hard I tried. Sometimes a body could not be mended. Sometimes nothing could be done.

My head knew that, in my own time, nothing could be done for Julia save surgery. Heart surgery. Even with the most skilled surgeon London had to offer, open-heart surgery would very likely kill her. It would have the slimmest chances of survival on an adult, let alone an infant.

Jamie’s voice broke into my cacophony of thoughts.

“Are you going to make me beg, Claire?”

Before I could answer him, Julia announced her presence with a shrill cry from the bassinette behind me.

“You have a daughter,” I whispered, looking into my husband’s blue eyes for the first time.

He had been kneeling at my feet, looking up at me, but I hadn’t been able to meet his gaze until now. I knew the power they held over me and I wasn’t going to give in so easily.

His daughter’s wail and my words were enough to physically send Jamie backwards onto the floor. He sat there, staring at me, overcome with emotion. His chest heaved as he struggled to breathe. In truth, I felt a more than a little sucker-punched myself.

Slowly, completely unhinged, he made his way to his feet. He staggered around the chair I was sitting in and saw his daughter for the very first time. The sound of blankets rustling and Julia’s soft coos told me he had picked her up.

My heart urged me to fly to him, to wrap my arms around he and Julia and never let go. Instead, my brain replayed the last the two months: the betrayal, the feverish nights at L’Hopital, the endless weeks of watching Julia fight for her very life, the endless nights spent alone. All of it, every moment flashed before my eyes.

I propelled myself out of the chair and away from Jamie. I knew that if I saw them together, the tears would begin and I would never be able to stop. They would thaw the protective layer of ice I had so carefully placed around my heart. I would begin to feel again and I fought with every ounce of my being against it.

I could hear him whisper to her over and over in Gaelic, his voice thick with tears. Mo leanabh, mo leanabh. A piece of the wall cracked with each repetition, the weight of emotion pressing down hard upon me. The bricks of bitterness, betrayal, hate, and fear had been well made, but didn’t stand a chance against the power of my love for Jamie.

I turned and saw his tall form silhouetted by the firelight, an image suddenly and permanently engraved in my mind. The hard edges of the gilded gleam prodded me, thrusting me towards my husband and child.

I moved to his side, watching him meet his daughter for the very first time. He cradled her in his arm while his good hand traced the curve of her nose and lips. He looked up and saw me next to him.

Reverently, he moved his hand away from Julia’s face and offered it to me. I took it and he drew me into his embrace. The familiar smell of him washed over me, and the floodgates opened. With every body-wrenching sob, I could feel the last vestiges of my hate for him be torn away. It left me raw and so very vulnerable. Jamie stood there, holding Julia and I close, letting his tears mingle with mine for what seemed like hours.

Julia, not wanting to be left out, joined us in crying and Jamie shifted the baby into my arms. Her hungry cries set my hands in motion, but Jamie stopped them by kissing me soundly on the lips. He led us to the nearby settee and took my face in both his hands.

“I thought I had lost both of you,” he murmured, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

Not taking my eyes off of him, I nodded. “You almost did.”

His eyes closed and he brought his head forward to brush against mine. He said something in Gaelic and kissed me again.

“What was that?” I asked when we came up for air.

“Our daughter is perfect,” he repeated himself. I pulled sharply away from him, succinctly breaking the spell and hurdling us both into the present.

She was perfect to us because we were her parents, but the truth of the matter was that Julia had something seriously wrong with her heart. I couldn’t find the words tell him that his only child may not live to see adulthood. How could I take away what I had just given him?

“Jamie…” and that was it. His name was the only word I could speak.

I said it over and over, pulling him back to me. I buried my face in his shoulder and clung to him for dear life. He eased the baby from between us, nestling her in the crook of one arm as the other wrapped around me.

In the end, I didn’t need to say anything. He knew with one look. He always said my face was an open book. I usually resented being so unintentionally transparent, but not in this moment, not today

“Mo nighean donn,” came the voice I had missed so much, whispering words of comfort in the language of his heart. “Dinna fash, mo chridhe, there’s the three of us now.”


	6. Going Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire, Jamie, and Julia bond in the middle of the night, then travel to Lallybroch.

October 9th, 1744; Paris, France.  
Claire.

The mattress shifted slightly as Jamie left the bed. I cracked one eye open and watched him make his way to the adjoining nursery, completely naked. Moonlight silhouetted his chiseled muscles as he passed the window. He had bathed before bed, making his creamy skin radiate health and vitality.

He had begun to talk to our daughter the moment his feet touched the floor. Julia’s wail amplified now that she knew she had an audience and Jamie hurried thru the door. I could hear him switch to Gaelic, a sure sign that Julia was in his arms. The high-pitched cry settled into a more of a disgruntled growl and I had the sudden image of a fluffy little lion cub learning how to roar.

I smiled to myself as I sat up in bed. Having expected him to pick her up and return to the bed, I wondered what they were doing in there as the sound of Jamie’s voice moved around the nursery.

“Much, mo beag graidh, fhuair mi thu.”

Shh, my little darling, I’ve got you.

The growls faded into contented murmurs and my heart melted into a puddle.

A dull thump, likely Jamie bumping into something in the dark nursery, and the sound of rummaging told me my husband was up to something. Curiosity won over fatigue and I rolled out of bed to investigate. I grabbed my robe and lit a candle on my way across the room. Stopping in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt them, I committed the vision of father and child to memory.

Jamie was sitting on the bed, his large frame making it appear tiny. He bent over his now content daughter who, for some reason, was also naked. A flash of white caught my eye and the reason became clear. Jamie dropped the soiled nappy to the floor, on top of a soiled gown and swaddling, and slid a clean one into place beneath Julia.

I hid a smile as I watched him try to arrange and pin it properly. He got close once, but Julia wiggled and it came unfolded. Another attempt brought him closer to completion, but he stuck himself with the pin.

He brought his hand away in surprise and grinned at Julia, “Better my thumb than ye, aye?”

Jamie refolded the bit that had come undone and successfully pinned it. He tugged gently on the nappy and looked inordinately proud when it stayed together. Gathering Julia tenderly into his arms, he caught sight of me in the doorway.

“How long were ye standing there?” he asked, doubt slightly dimming the gleam in his eyes.

I set the candle down and moved to stand beside him. “Long enough to wish to stay in this moment forever.”

Jamie moved Julia to his shoulder and pulled me on to his lap. I leaned my head against him, letting his calm heartbeat steady mine. It was time to find the words. It was time to tell him why I treasured these moments so much, why I these moments of health were few and far between.

“She’s sick.” I whispered. I placed my hand on Julia’s back, rubbing small circles just the way she liked. She shifted slightly and let out a contented sigh. Jamie’s presence was as soothing to her as it was to me.

He didn’t respond verbally, but instead pulled me closer, burying his face in my hair.

“It’s her heart,” The words came slowly, but once I started to speak, I couldn’t stop. I had to tell him everything; her symptoms, my fears, even Master Raymond’s oddly worded prophesy. My face was covered in hot tears, both Jamie’s and my own, by the time I finished.

“Could they…” He trailed off and I could feel him swallow hard, past a lump in his throat, “Could they fix whatever is wrong in the future?”

I pushed myself away from him, just enough to see his face.

“Jamie, I’m not leaving you.”

An emotion I could quite name filled his eyes. “Ye would to save the bairn.”

“No,” I shook my head vehemently, starting to tremble in his arms. “I mean, yes, maybe I would, but who’s to say she that could go thru the stones? You can’t. Even if she could, it would kill her! Its not like walking thru a door, Jamie, its chaos inside the stones. It would tear her apart, tear her from me! What then? I would die before I lived without you and her, James Fraser. You cannot make me go. I chose you, I choose you.”

“Mo nighean dunn, I couldna live with myself if I kept the both of ye here when something could be done to save her.”

“There isn’t. Only surgery can fix what’s wrong with her heart and no one would risk doing open-heart surgery on an infant. There is nothing to be done, Jamie! Nothing I can do to save her! I can do nothing but watch my only child slowly die in my arms!”

All of the anger I had pushed back over not being able to heal her came loose in a single word: nothing. All of the rage, bitterness, and blame exploded to life and I hurled them at my husband.

Jamie managed to catch all of my fear and hate without batting an eye, taking my pain upon him, and tossed back redemption.

“Aye, there is something to be done, Claire: we can love her,” he gave Julia to me, wrapping his arms around us both. “We can spend everyday that she has left together, showing her what it is like to love and be loved. Our love is strong, mo chridhe. I dinna ken if love alone is strong enough to keep her alive, but I’m willing to try… if ye are.”

“Then bring me home,” I whispered, my lips brushing his. “Bring us back to Scotland.”

...

November 1st, 1744;  
Somewhere between Inverness and Lallybroch, Scotland.  
Claire.

The channel crossing was uneventful to say the least. Jamie spent the entire voyage passed out drunk on his bunk, and Julia joined him in peaceful slumber for most of it. The overland leg of our journey was proving to be more of a challenge.

“Stop. I can’t take this,” I said, reigning in my horse and dismounting in one movement. “Please, Jamie, give her to me.”

Jamie brought his mount up next to me and handed down our screaming daughter. He was handling her tears about as well as I was, his face drawn in concern. “I’m sorry, Sassenach, I canna settle her.”

I had made sure she was fed and dry when we left the inn, but the combination of irregular movement, inclement weather, and increased tension was enough to tip Julia right over the edge of colic and into the chasm of complete and utter despondency.

I sat down on a wet boulder, back to the road, and loosened the blankets she was bundled in. Taking a swift look at her nappy, I found it still dry. She had just eaten and wasn’t acting hungry, but loosened my stays just in case. Julia wasn’t even the slightest bit interested in nursing. I held her hands in mine and checked another item off the list: she wasn’t cold. The weather was stereotypically Scottish, rainy and chilly. We had taken great pains to shelter Julia from the elements, but, still, November was not an ideal month for an infant to travel.

Not wet, not hungry, not cold.

“What is it, darling? Will you please show me what’s wrong?” I begged my infant daughter, pulling my earasaid tighter around us both.

I tried everything I could think of. I rocked, I patted, I walked, I bounced: everything that usually worked and then some. After ten fruitless minutes, I lowered myself back down on the rock and joined Julia in her misery, my hot tears warming chilled cheeks.

Jamie knelt beside me and took my face in his hands, “What can I do, mo chridhe?”

“I don’t know,” I sobbed.

“Then let me tell ye what I ken, aye?” He wiped my tears away with his thumb, caressing my cheekbone.

He was calm. How in bloody hell could he be so calm when his daughter had been for over an hour and showed no signs of stopping?

His voice was low and even, steady and sure as the massive boulder I was sitting on. His eyes were clear and bright, never straying from mine. His gaze loosened the stronghold of panic on my heart. It always did.

“I ken I love ye more than life itself and, in spite of all the heartache I’ve caused ye, I ken ye love me too. I ken that ye are the most beautiful woman this side of heaven. I ken ye are a wonderful mother to our bairn and ye are doing everything in your power to make sure she is well and happy.”

Julia let out a shriek that told her father just exactly how far from happy she was, making Jamie smile at the perfect timing. “I also ken that she is your daughter and canna resist speaking her mind.”

I couldn’t help but smile at his wry grin, “Oh, my daughter, is she? She’s a stubborn Scot if I ever met one.”

“Oh, aye. I ken that too, Sassenach.” He brought his face close, his nose nuzzling my neck. “But I ken it’s her stubborn, warrior’s spirit that will keep her wi’ us.”

“That’s what Master Raymond called her. Did I tell you that? He said she was my petit guerrier.”

“Aye, ye did and she is that,” he agreed as he gently took Julia from my arms. “Let me have a turn wi’ mo beag laoch.”

“Leoch?” I raised an eyebrow.

He smiled and shook his head, “Nae, but it sounds close, Sassenach. Laoch is a warrior or hero.”

With that, he rose and began his usual calming routine.

The two of them had become inseparable in the weeks after Jamie retuned to me. They had their own secret language, similar to the whispers of motherhood, but something indescribably unique. He tucked her up firmly against his chest, swaying gently, murmuring Gaelic reassurances in her ear. They walked back and forth in front of me. With each pass, Julia became less and less distraught. Soon, Julia settled into contentment and was silent. Jamie stopped pacing in front of me, grinning from ear to ear.

I glared back up at him, “That’s not fair.”

“Aye, well, dinna fash, Sassenach, I think ye had her most of the way there. Do the two of ye want to try the wagon with Murtagh?” He helped me up from the rock and lead us back towards the horses.

“No,” I responded immediately, shuddering at the thought of bumping along in a poorly made wagon on deeply rutted roads with a colicky three month old. ”I think she should ride with you again. You seemed to have charmed her into silence, maybe you can get her fall asleep.”

Jamie apparently took my suggestion as a personal challenge, for less than twenty minutes later, Julia had settled into a shallow slumber as we plodded thru the dripping Scottish Highlands. The road, more like a path at this point, began to discourage side-by-side travel, forcing me to fall in line behind them. Fergus had joined me in the saddle when we remounted and seemed to be dozing as well. He leaned heavily against my back, arms loose about my waist.

I watched Jamie turn this way and that, taking in the beauty of his homeland. I could hear him speaking, but the wind swept away his words before I could make out what he was saying. His voice was animated, and I could only imagine the stories he was telling Julia. Heeling my mount when the road finally allowed, I pulled up along side him.

“How’s she doing?” I asked nervously. I knew she wasn’t crying, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t unhappy.

He peeked under his plaid and smiled down at his daughter, “She’s found her thumb, Sassenach. All is well.”


	7. Lallybroch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire, Jamie, and Julia settle into life at Lallybroch.

December 1744; Lallybroch, Scotland.  
Claire.

Jenny came into the kitchen with what looked like a bed sheet. Pulling me by the elbow, she ushered me to the long kitchen bench that was pulled away from the table. She grinned at me, “I did this all the time wi’ wee Jamie, it works like a charm.”

Did what? I gave my sister-in-law a dubious look from my sudden seat.

I had no doubts what so ever about Jenny’s competency as a mother. She had taught me much in the four weeks we had been at Lallybroch, handling Julia’s episodes with a grace and calm I didn’t know was possible. I could treat a nearly fatal injury without batting an eye, but somehow I became a vacillating jellyfish whenever Julia became inconsolable, which was often.

Yes, Jenny knew what she was doing in all things baby, but what on earth was she going to do with that?

Without a word, Jenny placed the cloth on Julia’s back and wrapped it around me. Each end came back over each shoulder, crossing and tucking into the large strip across Julia. We did a strange dance with our hands and arms as we tried to wrap and support the baby simultaneously. Jenny moved and nudged the folds of fabric until each band was exactly where she wanted it. She adjusted the slack next; making sure the swath was neither too loose nor too tight.

She wrapped the ends around once more and tied it in place around my waist. “Let go, just for a moment, but keep yer hands close in case we need to adjust more.”

I did so, hesitantly, unsure of how the baby’s weight would distribute. Julia sighed and shifted slightly, bringing her thumb to her mouth, but showed no signs of objection to the new getup.

I let my hands fall to my lap and beamed up at Jenny, “This is perfect.”

“Does it feel alright? Pull funny?” She asked, brow furrowed. “I havna done it on someone else before, only to myself.”

I shook my head and Jenny eased me into a standing position, once again making sure the baby was supported correctly.

“Who taught you how to work this miracle?” I asked.

“Mrs Crook or one of the tenants, I dinna ken. I was so sleep deprived those first months that I dinna think I could tell down from up most days.” She chuckled as she moved back to preparing dinner.

Out of sheer curiosity as to what exactly I could do while wearing a baby, I picked up the bowl nearest to me on the table. Julia didn’t so much as bat an eye.

“Jenny, you may have saved what’s left of my sanity,” I commented blandly while staring at the top of my child’s head.

She laughed outright, but dismissed my compliment with a shrug. I set down the random bowl and picked up the large bowl of potatoes I had been mashing. Moving it to the end of the table, I could now stand and do the job. My lower back rejoiced.

The door flew open with a burst of frigid air as the men entered the kitchen. Their stamping boots told me the snowfall had begun to accumulate. I looked over my shoulder just in time to watch Jamie tickle the nape of Jenny’s neck with his frozen fingers. Her reaction was exactly what he was going for and I added, what I assumed was, another colorful Gaelic phrase to my vocabulary. He deftly avoided his sister’s jabbing elbow and greeted her sweetly in response.

I turned to show him Jenny’s contraption, feeling more than a little like a kangaroo.

“Ye’ve added a bonnie wee bauble to yer dress, Sassenach,” he teased as he gently kissed the top of his daughter’s head. “It makes yer eyes sparkle.”

“What do you think?” I grinned, tipping my head back to look at him as he gathered me into his arms.

“She’s right in the middle of whate’er ye’r doing, aye? Just as she likes,” he responded ruefully as tried to pull me closer to him without squishing Julia, who firmly disliked being squashed between us.

“Umhmm,” my hands found the bottom hem of his heavy woolen jacket and slid beneath, taunting, “but it leaves my hands free.”

...

February, 1745; Lallybroch, Scotland.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Sassenach,” Jamie’s voice purred in my ear as he slid onto the kitchen bench next to me.

I swatted his playful hands away from my skirts and gave him a wry smile, “Even when I’m covered head to toe in you’re daughter’s snot and spit-up?”

Wee Jamie and Maggie had been kind enough to share their winter head cold with Julia a week past and while her benefactors seemed to be on the upswing of their bout with the rhinovirus, Julia was still in the thick of things… metaphorically speaking as well as in regards to mucous.

Three sick children, combined with a newborn that was up at all hours of the night eating, made sleep and self-care a hot commodity in the Lallybroch household. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept thru the night. My sleeves and bodice were caked with Julia’s deposits and I hadn’t even bothered to brush my hair before I pinned it up this morning.

“Aye, especially then.” He kissed the tip of my nose, easing Julia from my arms.

“Careful,” I warned him. “She’s grumpier than a wet cat today.”

Jamie nuzzled her cheek and was given a warm smile in return. “She canna be talking about you, mo beag nighean.”

“I see how it is,” I grumbled and rolled my eyes in mock annoyance.

Jamie slid an arm around me, placing a gentle kiss on my temple. “Can I do anything for ye, Sassenach?”

“Will you take her for awhile?”

With a grin, Jamie watched Ian leave the kitchen. He held tiny Catherine in one arm and held Maggie by the hand with the other, while wee Jamie trailed behind bemoaning his father’s lack of a third arm. “Aye. We’ll be in the nursery if ye have need of us.”

I leaned in, my lips nibbling his ear, “Oh, I always need you, James Fraser, but right this moment I need a break from our daughter or I just might scream.”

“Oh, aye?” Jamie plucked at my laces teasingly, “Is that a promise?”

“Leave,” I tried to glare at him, pushing him away, but could feel the corners of my mouth twitching, “or you’ll never know.”

***

“Claire!”

I woke with a start and nearly fell out of bed. Rubbing the sleep hastily from my eyes, I looked about the room, unsure of were Jamie’s panicked voice was coming from. “What is it?”

“I dinna think she’s breathing!”

I did fall out of the bed then, landing with a resounding thud. Kicking free of the blankets and sheets that had fallen with me, I scrambled to my feet. Jamie grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me into the rocker near the hearth. He thrust Julia into my arms, then crashed about the room trying to light as many candles as he could.

I brought my cheek just above her lips, waiting to feel the reassuring warmth of her breath. None came. Nearly ripping the blankets off her, I desperately searched for Julia’s pulse.

There. There it was.

In the very same instant, she coughed, if you could call it that. It did little to clear her airway and I placed her upright against my shoulder, firmly patting and willing her to cough again. She did so, spewing something warm down the back of my nightgown. My eyes slid shut in relief as her body arched, gathering as much air as her little lungs would allow, and coughed again.

The sound drew Jamie back to my side. I opened my eyes, searching for the calm strength that was always resided in his. I found none. Instead, I was face to face with a father completely torn apart at the seams. His hands shook violently as he placed a lamp on the table beside me, bathing the three of us in quivering light.

“Yer box, Claire?” He asked, voice tremulous.

“I need Jenny.” I shook my head. “Please, Jamie, go get Jenny.”

He was on his feet at the very mention of his sister, finally able to do something to ease his daughter’s pain. I could hear Jamie tear down the passageway. The door to the room Jenny shared with Ian opened with a crash and thudded against the wall. He was greeted with a series of shocked Gaelic explicatives, mostly from his sister, but Jamie cut them off with a brief and succinct explanation in the same tongue.

The sounds of annoyance quickly changed to those of concern and drew closer, traveling down the hall. Jamie propelled his sister ahead of him in to the room, all but throwing her onto my lap.

Quickly steadying herself, she placed a hand on Julia’s back and took stock of the situation. “Get the fire in the kitchen going as strong as ye can,” she looked over the top of my head and commanded Jamie. “Then put a kettle on.”

“Ye canna be wanting tea at a time like this?” His bewildered voice exclaimed from behind me.

“’Tis for steam, no tea, brathair,” Jenny wisely hid her amused smile. “Now, go!”

***

I placed a hand on Jamie’s shoulder, letting him know I was there to trade places with him. The cloth over his head lifted and a billow of steam escaped. He smiled tiredly up at me.

“Go back to bed, Sassenach, ” he urged gently. “She’s almost asleep and I dinna think she’ll need much more of this tonight. We’ll join ye in a minute.”

He let the cloth drop back into place, turning back to our daughter, but I made no move to return to the bed.

Jamie and I spent an entire month of nights, and infrequent daytime emergencies, encased in a shroud of steam. Ian had configured a steam set up at the hearth in the master bedroom, which allowed Jamie or I to catch a little sleep while the other took a turn in Julia’s personal sauna.

Jamie’s almost super-human hearing had saved Julia’s life more times than I wanted to admit. He could somehow sense the subtle changes in her breathing patterns while he slept and would wake in time to get Julia in an upright position before she wasn’t able to breathe. While Julia was securely in her father’s arms, I’d get the tent going, we prepared it ahead of time, and then situated for Jamie to hand her to me.

We had settled into a rhythm: I would take the first watch, Jamie the second, and, if needed, I’d relieve him for a third rotation. Tonight was the first time in days that we hadn’t needed the third go-around. I desperately hoped that this meant her lungs were finally beginning to clear.

With an audible sigh, Jamie pulled the damp cloth away and placed it beside him. He raised an eyebrow at me, clearly saying what he thought of me waiting up for him. I shrugged, “I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until you came to bed, anyway.”

My weary husband stood and handed me our sleeping daughter. He stretched his stiff shoulder and back muscles, placing a tender kiss on my temple before he moved to his side of the bed. He crawled in with a slight moan of contentment and was asleep in seconds.

I lay awake in bed, long after he was asleep, curled protectively around our fragile child. My mind drifted towards the future, the familiar questions of when and how and what nagging me until I could handle the silence no longer.

Nestling Julia’s downy head under my chin, I began to whisper the song that my mother had sang to me. “Oh, how I do love to be beside the sea…”


	8. Seasons Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire, Jamie, and Julia (and Fergus) are caught up in the Rising as Julia's health deteriorates.

April 10th, 1745; Somewhere between Beauly and Edinburgh, Scotland  
Claire.

“Can ye say Fergus?” Jamie prompted Julia.

“‘Us,” she immediately answered.

“What about Auntie Jenny?” I could hear the smile in his voice as he moved down the list of our daughter’s favorite people.

Julia seemed to think about this one for a time before replying. “Neenee.”

“Can ye say Maggie?” Jamie suggested.

This name was a relatively recent addition to her vocabulary. Julia and her cousin Maggie, Jenny’s middle child, were inseparable. The two were capable of just about anything. They were known to combine their skill sets to cause even greater mischief. Maggie was the brains, having the developmental advantage of being ten months older, and Julia the climber.

I swear that child could out climb a monkey.

“Gee.” Julia proudly supplied.

Jamie turned the subject away from family and onto the livestock that inhabited Lallybroch. Calls of moo, baa, meow, neigh, and woof traveled back to me over his broad shoulders. He tried to get her to cluck like a chicken, but she refused.

They started on anatomy next and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. How on earth was our child going to learn a complete language with Jamie and the Murray crew instructing in Gaelic, Fergus in French, and me in English? I could tell from Jamie’s praises that she was correctly identifying various parts of her body in all three, although English claimed the highest success rate.

Yeux. Sròn. Ears. Beul. Tête.

“Who am I, mo beag nighean?” His arm moved, presumably pointing to himself. “Who is this?”

“Da!” Julia giggled.

That sound.

My heart skipped a beat and a smile tugged at the corner of my lips. The sound of my daughter’s laugh was the only thing that could ease the overwhelming weight of fear pressing down upon me, if only for a moment.

Julia’s laughter was a rare sound in the last three weeks. Her health had taken a nose dive the day we arrived at Beauly and had been plummeting ever since. She was dropping weight at an alarming rate and slept about as much as she was awake. Her skin was cold and clammy, taut over her cheekbones and ribs. I used my time there to assemble anything I could get my hands on that would either ease her pain or possibly help her survive one day more.

We spent a good portion of our last days there arguing over our next course of action. Jamie insisted I return to Lallybroch with Julia, while I staunchly refused to do any such thing. Another of his plans involved all three of us back-tracking to deposit our daughter into Jenny’s capable hands, but I could not part with Julia any more than I could part with Jamie.

We both knew that moving forward to Culloden Moor would not only threaten our lives, but the life of our beloved daughter and, yet, returning her to the relative safety and comfort of Lallybroch wouldn’t ensure her health either. If we made sure she was kept protected from the elements, it didn’t matter much if she was here or there.

What did matter, was that we were together. I would continue to do everything within my power to keep it that way.

It had been two days since we left the ancestral home of Jamie’s forefathers with the small band of Fraser fighting men in tow. While traveling with a twenty month old was a considerable improvement upon traveling with a three month old, I wouldn’t do that again for all the tea in China, the pace that Julia had set was not what Jamie had expected. The plan had been that we were to meet Murtagh, Fergus, and the Lallybroch men at the Jacobite stronghold in Edinburgh tomorrow, but I could tell from the set of my husband’s shoulders that we would not be making that rendezvous.

Jamie switched to another of Julia’s favorite games: my name.

“Can ye say ma-ma-ma?” his voice raised slightly to ensure I could hear him.

I could hear them, alright. My husband found the obstinate streak in our daughter hilarious and repeated this little interchange whenever possible. All the better if he had an audience, which he did if the Beauly men could hear them.

“Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma,” Julia dutifully copied her father.

Jamie boosted his daughter higher onto his shoulder, “Who is tha’, Julia?”

I made a funny face, waggling my eyebrows, and she beamed at me.

“Mim!” she announced, clapping her hands.

Not Ma or Mama, not Mum or Mummy, but always Mim.

I grinned right back and replied, more to Jamie than Julia, “Give Da a kiss for me, will you, sweetheart?”

Happy to oblige, she planted what looked like a very slobbery kiss on Jamie’s cheek and clapped again in delight.

...

April 16th, 1746;   
Culloden House, two hours before dawn. 

Jamie scooped Julia up from the middle of the bed. She whimpered, but didn’t wake. Her father’s eyes grew wide as he looked at me from across the room, “She’s wet, Sassenach.” 

“The clean nappies are in my satchel,” I pointed to the pack on the floor by his feet, unsure as to why this was troubling to him. He had changed hundreds of nappies, many of which were in worse condition than simply “wet.” It had never phased him before. 

“No, Claire,” Jamie closed the space between us in two giant bounds. “She’s burnin’ up and drenched with sweat.” 

I took her from him and immediately felt what he had. My child lay limp in my arms, her head rolling back unnaturally. Peeling the damp clothing off her, I turned to Jamie. “I need water.” 

He hastily brought me the pitcher and basin from the nightstand, sloshing some of the contents onto his shoes in the process. Shoving a clean cloth into my hand, he asked “Do he need anythin’ from your wee box?” 

Jamie seemed to voice the question for the sake of something to do, for he didn’t wait for my response to fetch it. He strode over to where it sat on the chest near the window and picked it up gingerly. Making the return trip in half the time, he set it on the bed next to me as if it contained the most fragile of items and was liable to explode at any moment. I dipped the cloth into the cool water and squeezed it out, trying to warm the cloth slightly in my hands before placing it on Julia’s brow. 

I hadn’t been successful in getting her to eat or drink anything since yesterday morning, despite my best efforts. Jamie had had similar luck. Fergus had contrived some sort of game and gotten her to eat a few bites of stale bannock and two sips of cow’s milk while he was eating his own meager lunch, but it would be long gone by now. White willow was the only thing I felt comfortable giving to small children, but would I be able to get her to drink any of the tea? 

Sending Jamie to put the kettle on, I tried to rouse my sleeping daughter. I laid her next to me, moving the cool cloth to wipe her cheeks and neck. Julia didn’t so much as flinch. No fluttering of eyelids, no cries of discontent. Nothing. 

“Jamie,” I began to panic, “she isn’t waking up.” 

He sank down beside me on the bed, helping me undress her, “Dinna fash, mo nighean donn, ye ken how deep she sleeps. But she hates this, aye? She’ll rouse soon.” 

Julia did, indeed, hate any sort of change in clothing. It didn’t matter if it was putting clothes on or taking them off. Once they were on, they were on; once they were off, they were off. Now completely undressed, I tickled her belly, another thing that she could never sit still for. Still no movement. I soaked the cloth in the water and wiped her down from head to toes in a very impromptu bath, she hated bathing. 

No response. 

I found her pulse, needing to assure myself she was truly alive. It was much too fast, as it had been for the last week, and irregular, but it was there. Jamie picked Julia up again, nestling her safely under his chin. I moved closer to him, resting my head on his shoulder with my face inches from my daughter’s. Her shallow breath tickled my nose as I took her tiny hand in mine.

Julia was dying. 

She had fought so hard, clung so fiercely to life. 

How could I now resign myself to her death? 

“Is she leaving us?” Jamie asked. His voice so low that if my ear hadn’t been right next to his mouth, I don’t think I could have heard it. I nodded against him, but couldn’t say it. 

I couldn’t do it. 

For the life of me, I could not tell my husband that our only child had hours left to live. 

Not when Scotland had the same prognosis.


	9. Calman Geal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire and Jamie say their goodbyes atop Craigh na Dun.

April 16th, 1746; Craigh na Dun  
Claire.

I stood at the outer edge of the circle of stones and could go no further.

Now that I had seen what love -- what life -- was truly like, how could I go back to a time without it?

I couldn’t.

Turning on my heel, I blindly walked straight into Jamie. He pulled me into his arms and whispered in my ear, “I dinna ken how I’ll let ye go either, Claire, but ye have to.”

Bloody man. He could always read my mind.

“For the sake of the bairn.” His hand traveled to my hips, coming to rest just above my womb. “He will be all that’s left of me. Ye, and the child ye carry.”

And there it was. The single, solitary reason why I could not stay.

Why now? My mind screamed. Why, when I had longed for so many months and years to be with child, must it be clear now? Why couldn’t it have been even a few weeks ago, when we might have had time to get away?

The logical and rational portion of my brain reminded me that even if I had, even if we had known of the child months ago, Jamie would not have left. He was destined for Culloden Moor, to stand with his men, to fall with the fate of Scotland.

Death didn’t frighten me.

I had watched too many people die to fear it. While, it was true, not all the deaths I had witnessed had been of the peaceful sort, I feared living without the people I loved far more than the end of my life.

Neither my husband nor my daughter would live to see the sunset. I couldn’t save either of them. I had tried. God, I had tried.

But I had failed. I couldn’t stop the rising tide of Scottish independence, the ebbing flow of Julia’s life. And so, here I stood: neck deep in waters I could never hope to swim in without something to grab hold of. About to return into the life I had left behind, the life I no longer wanted.

A life without either of them.

“Sassenach,” Jamie’s voice interrupted my thoughts, his hands echoing the desires of my heart.

***

Nestled in my arisaid as well as Jamie’s plaid, Julia was well protected from the wind and damp ground in her place beneath a nearby tree. Jamie stooped and gathered her into his arms, burrowing his face into the folds of wool beside hers. He rocked slowly back and forth as he spoke to her in Gaelic.

All the breath left my lungs as I caught some of what he was saying.

“Tha gaol agam ort, mo beag calman geal.”

I love you, my little white dove.

“I will be with her soon,” he swallowed hard as he placed her into my arms, “to watch over ye and the bairn.”

He made no attempt to stem his tears, only to be sure I understood his words.

“Name him after my father, aye?”

“I promise.” My voice sounded strange. Distant, almost detached.

The roar of the stones was growing louder by the second, shaking me to my very core. I knew Jamie was moving us slowly towards the center stone. My back was to it and I tried not to think of how close we were, how many more steps it would be.

I looked down at Julia. She lay motionless in my arms, save for a minuscule rise and fall of the blankets with her every breath. A sudden thought shattered what little semblance of self-possession I had left.

What if she couldn’t go thru with me?

“Promise me, Jamie.” I pushed at him, moving away from the stone. “Promise me you’ll stay with her. That you’ll lay her to rest somewhere safe. Promise me!”

Jamie’s eyes grew wide with shock, not at the suggestion he’d do anything but honor our daughter until the last, but with the idea that she might not be able to leave with me.

“She’ll go wi’ ye, Claire.” His voice was unwavering, sure of this as the only possible outcome.

“But what if she can’t,” I sobbed and pulled my daughter closer. “What if she can’t hear them like you, Jamie? Promise me!”

He straightened slightly, taking my face in his hands. “Then, aye, I promise ye, Claire. If she stays, she will be at rest beside my parents.”

“They’ll take care of her, won’t they? Your parents and mine.”

“Tha’ they will.” Jamie smiled wryly down at Julia, “It may take St Michael himself to keep her from turnin’ the place upside-down, though, aye?”

I gently placed a kiss atop of her head, another on each cheek, and the tip of her nose. 

Pressing my forehead to hers, I said goodbye to my daughter.

***

I woke face down in the grass, arms empty.

Scrambling to my feet, I desperately searched the base of every stone.

She was gone. 

I was alone.


	10. Curls and Cotton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire struggles with the loss of her daughter and husband in 1948.

August 20th, 1948; Boston Common, Boston USA.  
Claire.

“You gonna have baby?”

The question made me jump. I turned to see a little girl standing next to me, I swear she hadn’t been there a moment before.

“Ah,” I stammered, gripping the edge of the bench I was sitting on. “Yes, I am.”

She smiled at me, “My mama too.”

Nodding, I stared at her. My voice seemed to be having troubles working properly and the baby chose this moment to do an intricate gymnastics routine within me. The little girl didn’t seem to notice. She was looking past me, to a nearby fountain where a few birds were exploring the water.

Her skin was fair, almost translucent. The blue of her eyes so deep they were almost black. She had a smattering of freckles across her cheekbones that only increased her overwhelming aura of childlike innocence. Sticking out in every direction, her brilliant auburn curls danced in the late summer breeze. It looked as though she had had a ribbon tying them back from her face at one point, but the pale blue satin hung loose above her ear.

“My birthday tomorrow.” she informed me nonchalantly.

A shiver ran down my spine. Tomorrow would have been Julia’s third birthday.

“Is it?” I asked, trying to sound as normal as possible. An invisible band of sorrow tightened around my chest and I was finding it very hard to breathe.

“Mama maked me a cake! I share with Daddy. He like cake,” she supplied as she twirled around beside me, her flower-sprigged skirt puffing out around her.

I shifted on the park bench, hoping the movement would urge the baby to settle into a new position. It didn’t work and I placed a hand where a pointed foot was trying to impale me. The movement quieted slightly, but didn’t stop altogether.

“That sounds wonderful. Will you have candles to blow out?”

“Yes!” The little girl beamed up at me, holding up three pudgy fingers. “Mama say I big girl now!”

“You are indeed.” Tears filled my eyes without warning, threatening to pour free at any moment.

A voice called from somewhere behind me, “Julia!”

“Wait!” I cried as the little girl waved to me and turned to go.

She froze in place and tilted her head in question.

“Happy birthday, Julia.” I whispered.

Skipping towards me, she stood on tiptoe and gave me a kiss on the cheek. The touch tickled, almost like the brush of a butterfly’s wing. Another giggle escaped her rosebud lips as she left in a swirl of curls and cotton.

One hand covered my mouth, suppressing a sob, the other placed a hand on my now still womb.

You know her, don’t you, little one? That was your sister. Isn’t she beautiful?


	11. Tiuilip Bàn-Dhearg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire visits Lallybroch in the future. (1968)

October 1968; Scotland.  
Claire.

It had taken four different floral shops and as many days, but I finally had them. The final florist found them at a distributors in Edinburgh and we had arranged for me to pick them up at his shop this afternoon.

I reflexively reached out to my hand to keep them from sliding off the passenger seat beside me as I slowed to a stop outside the gate of Lallybroch. My gaze rested on the fragile, pink blooms of the bouquet of tulips, making my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

She would have been twenty-three this past August, a grown woman.

I had told no one about Julia, the child of my heart. Her memory was too precious, too raw to share with Mrs Graham. I certainly didn’t tell Frank.

She was mine alone.

This certainly didn’t keep the feeling of her presence at bay. I may not have said her name aloud in twenty years, but I thought of her everyday. I saw her in Bree’s smile, heard her in the laughter of school children.

I moved towards the small burial ground behind the stone house in a fog of memories and pain. The wind stirred the leaves on the ground beside me. It carried the sound of child’s voice with it, a single word spoken with all the tenderness a toddler poses: Mim.

I hesitated at the entrance of the sacred ground and called the visions of the past to play once more for me. I saw her auburn curls, bouncing with delight as she and Jamie spun around the master bedroom here at Lallybroch. Her blue eyes smiled at me as she giggled and threw her arms around my neck.

Being torn from Jamie was sorrow enough, but to have my child wrenched from my arms was the tipping point that catapulted me into the depths of despair. She was dying, had hours left to live. I had said goodbye on the chance she didn’t survive the trip thru the stones, yet it hadn’t been enough. I needed more. More time, more closure. Final thoughts and words and caresses would never be enough.

Jamie had promised me she would be laid to rest here with his parents if she could not come with me thru the stones. This knowledge kept me going when her absence made me weep. I had been alone, until Brianna came along, but Julia would never be. She slept with the protection of her grandparents and watched over me alongside her father.

Walking along the weathered stones, I read the names. Some were familiar, some foreign. I found Ellen and Brian’s right where they had been when I had visited them with Jamie. My heartbeat slowed as I mentally prepared myself to see my daughter’s headstone for the first time.

It wasn’t where I thought it would be.

Caitlin Maisri. Iseabaìl. Two small stones, monuments to children, but Julia was not among them. The world seemed to tip and right itself as another stone caught my eye. It was a little distance away, but still near Jamie’s parents’. I stumbled over a tuft of grass as I walked over for a closer look.

Julia Ellen. Beloved daughter of James and Claire.

My knees went out from under me and I collapsed beside her stone, reaching out with a shaking hand to trace the carved letters. The stone itself was partially sunk into the Scottish soil. Another line, presumably the dates of her birth and death, was obscured beneath the ground. I dug at the unyielding dirt with my fingers, my heart needing the confirmation that she hadn’t lived long without me.

But I received none.

The more I uncovered, the more obscured the chiseled text became.

I finally stopped, resting my forehead against the cold stone, and let my tears fall with abandon.


	12. Sisters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brianna and Claire discuss Julia after witnessing Jillian/Geillis go back in time.

October 1968; Wakefield Residence.  
Brianna.

“There’s someone else I haven’t told you about, Bree.”

“Please tell me I have fairy godmother,” I winked at Mama over the rim of my mug of hot cocoa. The corners of her mouth tugged upwards, so I continued, “Or my cousin’s uncle’s niece’s sister is Queen Elizabeth.

“You haven’t a fairy godmother,” She responded, the hint of a smile disappearing.

That pensive, almost hesitant, look crossed her face again. She’d been wearing it often since our run-in with Gillian Edgars at Craigh na Dun the night before. I was only beginning to see the reason why my mother had always seemed aloof to me and, now that I knew the truth and believed it, I didn’t want to do or say anything that would make her withdraw more.

I mentally kicked myself, it seemed my second jest had.

I tried to come up with something to say to fill the silence, something neutral, but she went on before I could think of anything worthwhile.

“Jamie and I… we… had another child.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke, her eyes fixed on the tea leaves at the bottom of her cup. “Her name was Julia.”

A sister? I had a sister?

Had. Was. Words of the past. What happened? Where was she?

Mama continued haltingly, “She had a heart condition, a congenital defect. She died just before I came back thru the stones.”

My mind reeled at the thought of what my mother had gone thru, losing a husband and a child all in one day?

An older sister. I had an older sister. I had always wanted siblings and now, it seemed, I had one.

“Do you remember Christine Johnson?” Mama looked up at me, her eyes wet with unshed tears.

I nodded.

Christy had lived two houses over from ours when I was growing up. She was a couple years older than me and I had adored her. Blonde and petite, we were about as different as different could be, but she was always willing to include me in her fun. We had sleep-overs at each other’s houses often as we reached middle and high school.

“She and Julia would have been the same age.”

The grandfather clock in Reverend Wakefield’s study chimed nine o’clock, the hours reverberating thru the room like someone pounding nails into a coffin.

The silence thickened. 

What was there to say?

Choosing actions over words, I got up from my chair and rounded the table. I wrapped my arms about her shoulders, her hands clinging to me tightly. She rested her head against me and I could feel a warm tear slide down her cheek and onto mine. “She would have loved you,” she whispered.

“And I her,” I replied, gently placing a kiss on Mama’s temple.


	13. Print Shop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie and Claire have reconnected in the eighteenth century and discuss their firstborn.

November 1766; Above the print shop belonging to Alexander Malcolm, Edinburgh, Scotland.  
Claire.

“She had curls like Julia as a lass, aye?” Jamie reverently stroked a photograph of toddler Brianna standing on a park bench holding an ice cream cone, her hair a riotous mess around her face.

“They tamed a bit as she got older, but Bree had that same cowlick just there like Julia did.” My fingers found the rebellious tuft the three of them shared at the back of his head.

He smiled, “She’s fair like the both of ye too.”

“Very,” I agreed. “She burns in the sun easily and often complains of her freckles. I suppose that’s my genetics to blame, though, you tan rather than burn for the most part.”

“What of her voice, Sassenach? Did she sound like her?” His eyes implored me, leaving the photograph for the first time. He seemed to absorb every piece of information I gave him, needing to know every detail about his child.

I nodded, “She does.”

We fell silent for a time, just basking in the newness of being together again.

“Its beautiful, you know,” I whispered.

He turned, placing a kiss atop my head. “What is, mo nighean donn?”

“Julia’s stone.” I answered.

I wanted to continue. My heart longed to tell him how much it meant for me to have her by his parents, how comforting it was to know that she was forever safe at Lallybroch, but my lips wouldn’t form the words. I grabbed at his hands, needing to feel their strong security.

His eyes gleamed in the candle light, “I thought of her often while ye were gone, our beag calman geal. Imagined her playing with Willie and the bairn Jenny lost.”

“Caitlin, wasn’t it?” I asked as I traced the faint ‘c’ at the base of his palm with my thumb.

“Aye,” Jamie answered, clearing his throat. “I would bring a flower for each o’ them when I’d visit my parents graves.”

A lump rose in my own throat. Turning my face into his shoulder, I swallowed past it and added, “I brought her pink tulips. I should have brought flowers for them too, while I was there, but all I could think of was her.”

“She’s at Lallybroch, then?” A hint of a smile warmed Jamie’s voice.

I pulled away from him slightly, needing to see his eyes. “Of course she’s at Lallybroch.”

What on earth did that mean? Why wouldn’t she be?

“I didna want to assume… I wasna sure… with Frank, ye ken,” he added.

The air around me grew cold. I pulled my hands from his and grabbed fistfulls of my skirt.

“What in bloody hell does Frank have to do with where our daughter is buried?”

Jamie’s brows furrowed in confusion, “What are ye saying, Claire?”

It was one thing for him to have avoided Julia’s grave out of grief, but he was acting as though he had no knowledge of where he had laid her to rest.

“What am I saying? You’re the one not making any sense.” I stood and backed away from him, “You speak as though you haven’t the foggiest idea where she is!”

He tried to reach for me, but I avoided him. “How would I ken where she is if ye dinna tell me, Claire?”

If I didn’t tell him?

“Why would I need to tell you where you buried her?” I asked slowly, finding it very hard to breathe.

Fear began to creep into Jamie’s eyes. “The two o’ ye went into the stones, Claire. Did she no come out wi’ ye?”

No.

This wasn’t possible.

Spots flashed before my eyes as Jamie lunged towards me, just in time to gather me into his arms before I hit the ground. The noise of the stones roared in my ears and drowned out the sound of Jamie’s voice. I was laying in his arms, the rough cotton of his shirt pressed against my cheek, but the world rushed past me as though I were falling off a cliff.

Wrapping my arms about his neck, I clung to him fiercely as my tears slowly pulled me back into reality. He wasn’t speaking anymore, but wept with me, gently rocking back and forth. The repetitive motion and vibration of his strong heartbeat set me back on solid ground.

If she hadn’t come thru with me and she hadn’t stayed with Jamie, where and when did she go? And how was she buried at Lallybroch?

Jamie was the one to actually put words to the question, once he found his voice again.

A strong spasm ran thru me, making me convulse at the sound of it. His arms squeezed tighter around me, as if protecting me from myself.

“Where is she, Jamie?” I asked after a time, my voice trembling.

“She is at rest, mo chridhe,” Jamie whispered in my ear.

“But when? How?”

“I dinna ken,” his thumb wiped at a trail of tears on my cheek, “but if she is at Lallybroch, that means she was with family, aye?”

“She finds us,” I murmured.

Jamie’s chin quivered as he tried to smile, “We always find a way back to each other, mo nighean donn. Why should our daughter be any different?”


	14. Raigmore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire "visits" Julia in the future.

April 16th, 2007, 7:45pm; Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, Scotland.  
Nurse Katie Campbell.

“Abandoned toddler found in Cairngorms National Park by hiker. Unresponsive. Requesting immediate evac to Raigmore Hospital from St Vincent’s.”

The foundling had, of course, been granted permission and arrived post-haste in Inverness ten minutes ago in critical condition.

“She was wearing this?” I nudged the plastic bag containing the clothing the little girl had been found in, an audible squish coming from the soggy outfit. Homespun dress, knit sweater, and cloth nappy had all been hand made along with her crudely fashioned leather shoes.

“Aye, an’ a’ the top o’ Craigh na Dun, no less,” an orderly added.

I rolled my eyes. Granny Fiona had told my siblings and I stories of people and fairies that traveled thru the stones, but I’d never believed them to be anything but what they were: stories.

“Ye ken the standin’ stones o’ Craigh na Dun, don’t ye? ‘Tis an unlucky place, to be sure, Nurse Campbell.” he warned

The head matron snorted in derision behind me, “Dinna listen to Gavin, Katie, lass. He’s full o’ the auld tales.”

“Aye, that I be, Auntie,” Gavin grinned and shrugged, winking cheekily at her. “But who do ye suppose told ‘em to me?”

“Get on wi’ ye,” she shooed him away while trying her best not to smile.

…

11:30 pm

The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, PICU for short, was quiet tonight. I sat and held her hand as I watched her irregular heartbeat on the monitor. The room was dark and silent around us.

A sudden creak of the mattress made me jump.

Still unconscious, it hadn’t been the child. I looked to the foot of the bed and my blood ran cold.

There, sitting and holding the little girl’s other hand, was a woman I had never seen before in my life. Her clothes were as strange as the child’s had been, a green bodice and skirt made up in an ancient fashion. A breeze that I didn’t feel stirred the curls around her shoulders and I knew in an instant that she wasn’t really here.

Before I could figure out what on earth to say, she turned to me and spoke. “Please,” she begged, her voice melodic and almost otherworldly. “Save my baby.”

I simply nodded, unsure of how to respond to a request from a ghost.

The figure bent over the child and placed a kiss on her cheek, tucking the little girl’s auburn curls behind her ears. With this loving caress from her mother, the child’s heart rate became stronger and her eyelids flickered.

“Her name is Julia,” the woman whispered as she stood. Then, looking at me, asked, “You’ll take care of her for me, won’t you?”

“I will,” I vowed without hesitation.

…

2:00 am

“Julia?” The head matron repeated dubiously.

I shrugged, realizing how strange I must sound, “Call it mother’s intuition, but I think that’s her name.”

“Ye aren’t a mam, lass…” A slow grin spread across the woman’s face. “Unless this is yer way of tellin’ me somethin’.”

“No!” I shook my head, warmth spreading across my cheeks. “It’s just that I feel a sort of connection to her. She doesn’t have anyone, you know?”

“Aye, I ken, poor bairn. Just dinna get too attached to the wee thing.” She patted my shoulder as I left the nurse’s station and headed to my car.

…

10:00 am

Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Pause. Bzzzz. Bzzzz.

I knocked the phone off the bedside table in my haste to silence it. Sliding halfway off the bed, I snatched it off the floor and glared at the screen.

Six unread messages. Three from the Head Matron, my boss, and three from Gracie, my best friend and fellow nurse at the hospital.

Good Lord, they knew I wasn’t on call, right? I was just there and would be again in a matter of hours. What was so important that it couldn’t wait four more hours?

I scrolled thru the texts on my lock screen, still able to read them in the order received.

9am- HM- Yer bairn is awake.

9:15am- Gracie- OMG she’s so PRECIOUS

9:30am- HM- Any chance ye could come in early?

9:40am- Gracie- paging baby whisperer

9:50am- Gracie- PAGING BABY WHISPERER!!! REPORT TO BASE ASAP

10:00am- HM- Need you STAT

“Shit,” I muttered as I hit the button to call my boss.

“How soon can ye be here?” were the first words out of her mouth.

I yanked on my scrubs and ran towards the door, “Be there in ten!”

…

Fifteen minutes later.

Julia’s screams welcomed me as I pushed open the PICU doors. Thankfully, she was our only patient at the moment and wouldn’t upset any other children, but the sound was quickly tying a knot in the pit of my stomach.

“Katie’s here!” Gracie’s shoulders sagged with relief as she announced my entrance.

“What have you tried to get her to settle?” I asked, looking over my shoulder while I quickly washed my hands.

She sighed, “More like wha’ havena we tried.”

I grinned and winked at her.

I had a good track record of calming young children down when our tried and true methods failed, earning me the nickname of Baby Whisperer. It was a bit of a misnomer, though, as I was as normal as could be with infants.

Julia sat upright in bed, her cheeks red with the exertion of screaming bloody murder. A frazzled nurse looked up as I approached, giving me a thankful smile.

I greeted the distraught child in a sing song voice while still a good distance from her. Her head snapped in my direction and I continued speaking, switching to Gaelic for something new to distract her.

“Much, a eudail, chan eil caoineadh.” Shh, darling, don’t cry.

Eyes wide and suddenly silent, she stretched out her arms to me. I swept her onto my lap as I sat down on the bed. She took a deep, shuddering breath and melted into me.

“That’s the way.” I praised. Humming, I rubbed her back in gentle strokes until she was at last completely calm. I shifted her in my arms so she could see my face and smiled down at her, “You are such a brave girl, a leannan.”

Her dark lashes blinked slowly as she studied me, quite serious. A tentative hand reached out and patted my cheek as if in thanks.

I took it in mine and kissed it, warranting me a shy smile from the little girl who would quickly become my everything.


	15. Claire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire "visits" Julia again as she has surgery. Fiona Graham Campbell identifies the ghost as someone she's met before.

June, 2008; Edinburgh, Scotland.  
Nurse Katie Campbell.

I stood at the observation window and watched Julia’s surgery unfold. I could hear Grannie Fiona’s knitting needles click at a steady, rapid pace from her spot behind me. There was a perfectly good chair beside her, with the same view, but my nerves wouldn’t let me sit still.

Calling in no small amount of favors, the head matron and I had gotten Julia onto the best pediatric pulmonary specialist in Scotland’s waiting list. He had moved her up to the top of his list once he heard her story and I had driven Julia here to Edinburgh to meet with him dozens of times in the fourteen months.

Today, he would repair her ventricular septal defect and replace her pulmonary valve. The surgery itself seemed to be going well. It had been years since I had assisted in an operation, but nothing the surgeon’s standard medical conversation raised any red flags.

I was thankful for Grannie Fiona’s presence, not wanting to be entirely alone but not wanting to be with someone who didn’t understand the situation. I had been granted temporary custody of Julia and we both lived with my grandmother. We had discussed the intricacies and puzzlements of Julia’s case over many a cup of tea and knew it just as well as I did. There was, for once, a guy in my life, but I hadn’t told him about Julia. She wasn’t my legal daughter, after all.

Yet.

A year had gone by and the authorities still had nothing in the form of leads. No missing children had been reported resembling her and, without a name or date of birth, they didn’t really even a firm identity to work with. She had a blood type and fingerprints, but, as toddlers weren’t the usual suspects for domestic crime, she wouldn’t be in any of the databases.

Without a documented date of birth, we had to come up with one ourselves. We finally settled on seventeen to nineteen months as her approximate age, making her birthday somewhere between the middle of July and September. July 31st had been my mother’s birthday and, as it fell within in the range, we entered that as her official birthday.

She weighed barely seven kilograms soaking wet and was a little over seventy-six centimeters tall when she arrived at Raigmore. Even though she had been roughly the size of a one year old, her teeth suggested she was a good three to six months older than that. Her mental milestones hit about the eighteen month old mark, but it was her speech that had been, and still was, a bit of a wonderment to us all.

She possessed a large vocabulary, but the kicker was that she had troubles sticking to one language. We determined she could understand three: English, Gaelic, and French. She would really only speak French if spoken to in the language, but she freely babbled in a hilarious mixture of English and Gaelic.

Who on earth were her parents? Or, in my opinion, who had they been? 

Nothing had disproved my theory that her parents were dead and it was quickly becoming accepted as fact.

Her lack of medical history had proven to be a problem in her first days at Raigmore. We hadn’t known if she had any allergies and discovered the hard way that she didn’t respond well to anesthesia. We almost lost her when we she went under for her shunt placement. This surgery posed no small amount of risk, but she wouldn’t reach adulthood without it.

A movement in the corner of the operating theater caught my eye.

“She’s back,” I commented to Grannie Fiona without turning.

The older woman cackled as she got out of her chair to come look. “I kenned she would be.”

I had told Grannie of Julia’s mother’s ghost. The apparition had appeared no less than six times in the year Julia had been in my life. Grannie wholeheartedly believed me and would often tell me her opinion on what each sighting meant. The phantom woman hadn’t spoken in her subsequent visits, only coming to comfort her child.

Grannie suddenly grabbed hold of my arm as she came up beside me, her grip vice-like.

I looked down at her, startled, “What?”

“I…” she broke off, then took a deep breath and started again. “I can see her.”

She placed a hand over her heart, as if to stop its riotous beating. Mine was behaving in much the same way. Up until this point, it seemed that I was the only one who could see her, save a few of my colleagues who professed to have felt her presence.

The figure moved closer to the operating table, coming to stand beside the anesthetist at Julia’s head. Her hand cupped it’s curve as she gently kissed the child’s brow. She straightened then, and looked to where we stood in the observation room.

Grannie Fiona let out an audible gasp and just about fell over.

“Katie, I ken who she is!” she exclaimed.

“Who? Julia?” I asked as I steadied her. “Of course you know who she is.”

“Nae,” she exclaimed. “her mother!”

I tried to usher Grannie back to her chair, thinking her faint at the sight of the surgery, but she adamantly refused.

“I’ve met tha’ woman before,” she insisted.

“You’ve what?”

She finally tore her eyes away from the room below and stared at me, “Her name is Claire.”


	16. In the Days Between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julia grows up in the twenty first century.

November 2009; Inverness, Scotland.  
Nurse Katie Campbell.

Julia wriggled in my arms as I tried to dry her off after her evening bath. She didn’t mind the bath itself, but hated being naked on principle. Entry and exit were always a chore.

Slippery as an eel, she escaped and bolted out the bathroom door. She ignored my cry of frustration as she banked around the corner, disappearing in a whirl of dripping auburn ringlets. I heard Granny laugh from the kitchen as the door to Julia’s room shut with a slam.

I picked myself up off the floor and made my way down the hallway. Mentally groaning, I discovered she hadn’t gone into her room, but mine. Sticking my head thru the door to see what mischief she was causing, I called her name. A lump at the end of my bed answered with a muffled giggle.

She was under the blankets and soaking wet. Great.

“Hmmm. I wonder where Julia went?” I said loudly as I crossed the room.

Another giggle came from my bed.

Flopping down beside the lump, I playfully leaned against her. “This looks like a good spot to sit and think about where I could find her.”

Julia squealed with delight

“My goodness, there seems to be someone in my bed!” I feigned surprise. “Who could it be?”

“Me! Me!”

I grinned, “Me who?”

“Jooweeah!” Julia.

“Is it?” I asked, patting the lump as if trying to gauge who it was. “I thought it was Granny.”

I was rewarded with an outbreak of hysterical giggles from beneath the blankets. Be still my heart, that sound! I would do just about anything to hear her laugh like that. It was a rare occurrence, her adjustment to life with me had been a struggle.

A copper head popped out of the tangle of blankets and the glorious sound magnified tenfold as she tackled me. We fell back laughing against the pillows, her wet hair splayed across my face. I pulled a damp curl out of my mouth before kissing her on the cheek.

She patted mine in appreciation, a gesture that was quickly becoming trademark Julia, and slipped back under the covers. Only her ten perfect toes were exposed to the ambient temperature as she had crawled in head first. I took a moment to tweak each one before going to get her pajamas.

Julia’s room was directly across the hallway from mine and next door to Granny’s. Painted a pale yellow, it had just enough room for her toddler bed and a chest of drawers. We would need more space one day, but for now I valued Granny’s resident expertise over square footage.

I opened the bottom drawer and took out the only thing Julia would wear to bed: an adult sized tshirt, well worn from use. There were about six in the drawer, all mine.

She refused to wear pajamas, having definite opinions on elastic waistbands and the fabric most children’s sleepwear was comprised of. Granny had made her a standard nightgown of the softest flannel you could find only for it to be simply tolerated by Julia. She’d wear it if nothing else was available, but strongly preferred my cotton tshirts.

This one was a hunter green with white lettering, reading “Harvard University.” My cousin, we were as close as siblings, was a professor there and had sent it to me upon request when he got the job some ten years ago. He proudly gave me a tour last time I visited, and I had fallen head over heals in love with the city of Boston.

Julia hadn’t moved an inch on the bed in the time it had taken me to retrieve the shirt. This was unusual. Drawing back the covers, I found her sound asleep. She had the strangest sleeping habits and I would often find her in haphazard sleeping positions in the morning.

I smiled to myself as I picked up her limp form and carried her to her own bed. She didn’t wake when I set her down, nor when I slipped her into the faded garment. An entire platoon of elephants could barge thru her room and she wouldn’t stir.

Tucking a damp curl behind her ear, I hummed a few bars of the lullaby she loved.

Sleep my child and peace attend thee, all through the night.  
Guardian angels God will send thee, all through the night…

...

New Years Eve, 2010; Boston, Massachusetts.

 

I hated parties like this. The only people I knew were the host and hostess, my cousin Michael and his wife Tiffany, and their immediate family. They were all occupied with their hosting roles, leaving me to float aimlessly from room to room in search of meaningful conversation.

Sitting in the corner of a plush sofa in the family room, I absently listened to the coverage of the ball drop events in New York City. All of the children had congregated here too, leaving me in ample company, albeit noisy. Julia adored her older cousins and had no interest in me. I could have left the state all together and I don’t think she would have cared, as long as I was back by bedtime.

The countdown clock read two hours to midnight. If I just stayed here and hid among the children, would anyone notice? A tall, dark haired man sat down on the other end of the couch and I mentally sighed. I’d have to find a new spot soon.

“You look like you’re having about as much fun as I am.” He commented. I turned and found him looking extraordinarily bored.

I cocked an eyebrow and raised my glass of wine, “I don’t know what you mean, I’m having the time of my life.”

A huge grin spread across his face, making me realize with a start just how handsome he was. There were worse people to crash my hideout.

“So, how do you know Michael and Tiffany?” Came the standard, safe question.

“He’s my cousin,” I answered for the fiftieth time tonight, “his father is my uncle.”

Recognition lit his face, “Ah, so you’re Katie.”

“And you would be?” I asked pointedly over the rim of my wine glass.

“Luke Murray, sorry.” He had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. “My son Max and I live across the street. Michael’s talked quite a bit about you.”

Ah, yes. The neighbor Tiffany tries to hook me up with every time we visit. According to her, we were perfect for each other.

I responded dryly, “And Tiffany about you.”

He laughed, a deep, resonant sound that sent an electrical current up my spine.

So what if he’s attractive, Catherine Anne. He also has a kid and lives on a completely different continent. Ignore it.

“It seems they’ve been conspiring against us.” He commented.

“I would have used the word matchmaking, but conspiring works too.”

He grinned unabashedly, “You’re not quite what I imagined you’d be.”

I snorted, “Neither are you.”

Somehow I had always imagined an overweight, balding man in his forties, despite Tif’s gushing descriptions. Luke Murray was about as far from out of shape as a person could be. He wore a loose fitting shirt, but I could tell he hid abs of steel beneath. The jeans he wore could hide many a fault, but I would bet my life his calves would rival Hercules himself.

No chance, no way. Get a grip.

Julia ran past me squealing with glee as Jake, Michael’s middle child, chased her around the couch. She launched herself into Luke’s lap shouting, “Save me from the dragon, Prince Charming!”

Luke didn’t even flinch, but hoisted her over his shoulder as he stood and charged after the fire breathing beast. He skillfully set Julia down and tacked Jake in one fell swoop. The eight year old boy erupted into a fit of giggles as Luke tickled him.

“Let the princess go or I'll… I’ll…” he punted. Then, seized with an idea, held the squirming child upside down and shook him gently, looking very much like someone trying to empty a piggy bank of its coins. “Or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll tickle you until you cry for mercy!”

Jake quickly surrendered, and he and Julia scurried off to join whatever game the other children were playing.

“Mike said you had a daughter, right?” Luke asked with a huge grin, and I found myself grinning right back as I nodded.

“She would be the fair maiden you just rescued,” I laughed.

His eyes grew wide with astonishment, “That adorable sweetheart is yours? She told me earlier that I was her Prince Charming because my shirt matched her eyes. Oh, and that she had extra shoes packed in case she loses one at the party tonight.”

“You should be flattered, she doesn’t pass that title out to just anybody,” I felt my cheeks grow warm. Prince Charming, indeed.

“I’m deeply flattered,” he assured me, placing a hand over his heart in over dramatic sincerity. “I’m just glad I’m not the one who has to tell her she can’t have a pony for Christmas.”

I laughed, thinking of the spoiled creature who lived at my brother’s house. “She already has one.”

…

“Hello again,” Luke said as he stepped into the doorway beside me.

I smiled in greeting. We had gone our separate ways to attend to our respective children in the last hour, but somehow both wound up back in the media room. “Still here?” I asked.

He groaned, rolling his eyes. “Max is a night owl and having the time of his life. Me, on the other hand…”

“I found Julia sound asleep in the corner of the laundry room with the dog.” I commented, shaking my head at the memory.

“Smart girl,” he chuckled.

She certainly had the right idea in disappearing. If our bed hadn’t been used as the coat depository, I would have vanished with her in tow long ago, claiming it was her bedtime. She may have protested, but, as she was the youngest child still in attendance, I didn’t think anyone would have thought much of it.

“Five minutes!” someone shouted drunkenly.

I sighed, “At least it’s almost midnight.”

The crowd in the media room was thick and Luke moved to let someone exit the room, looking after them in envy of their departure. “Can I get you a refill?”

“Yes, please,” I answered, all but shoving my glass into his hand.

…

Maybe it was the wine or maybe it was the festive, holiday spirit, but the close proximity of a certain Luke Murray was doing strange things to my adrenaline levels. He stood beside me, leaning against the back wall of the room as we watched the final minutes of 2010 tick by. I was hypersensitive to the brush of his sleeve against my arm, the smell of his cologne, his nonverbal reactions to the people around us.

He tipped his head in my direction, commenting, “You know, it’s good luck to kiss a redhead on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.”

“You’re making that up,” I replied as my heart thundered violently in my chest.

He chuckled, “Maybe the redheaded part, but not the rest.”

I frantically tried to think of something witty to say, but before I could, the tv announced that it was ten seconds until midnight and the room around us got considerably louder.

Luke leaned closer and his breath tickled my ear as he asked, “May I?”

Nine, eight, seven…

I looked at him, breath catching in my throat. His face was wonderfully near mine, his eyes asking in such a way that I nodded without really realizing I had until his face drew closer still.

Six, five, four…

Slipping my arm between him and the wall, my hand rested in the curve of his lower back. Luke responded in kind and drew my body to his. He was wonderfully solid, his unwavering strength and concentration supported me in a way I’d never felt before.

Three…

Two…

…

Christmas Morning, 2013; Boston, Massachusetts

“Mooooooom, Max won’t share his candy!” Julia’s voice floated up the stairs.

“It’s not my fault you ate all of yours already!” The teenager responded, followed by loud footfalls in the living room below as Max presumably evaded his stepsister’s reach.

Luke groaned, pulling me closer. His words were jumbled and run together with sleep. “‘Mnotreadyforthis.”

Another volley sounded between the siblings and I grinned when Julia switched to Gaelic. I could hear them clatter up the stairs and braced myself for impact.

“Yeah, well, same to you!” Max shouted as the door to our bedroom flew open and Julia launched herself onto the bed. She scrambled over Luke to my side, scurrying under the blankets.

“Your hands are freezing!” I protested as she latched herself onto me.

The bed shifted again, less violently this time, as Max climbed aboard and began to poke her from the relative safety of the other side of the bed. Julia reared up, flinging the blankets off and sending an even colder blast of air into my warm cocoon. She lunged towards him and put just enough pressure on my abdomen to make the babe within me turn somersaults in complaint.

“Oof,” I groaned.

Julia froze, looking down at me in concern. “Did I hurt the baby?”

“No,” I answered, “but he isn’t overly pleased with being tackled this early in the morning.”

“Neither am I,” Luke said gruffly, peeking out of one eye.

“She!” Julia insisted, then patted my growing bump. “Sorry.”

Max grinned sheepishly but made no move to leave, echoing, “Sorry.”

“Go back down stairs and we’ll be there in a minute,” I pushed the eight and a half year old bulk off of me. They did so without complaint, leaving us alone once again.

I rolled onto my side and pressed myself against my husband, melting into him as he curved himself around me. His hands instinctively gravitated towards his child, whispering “Merry Christmas” to the both of us.

...

July 1st, 2014; Between the Campbell-Murray residence and Logan International Airport, Boston Massachusetts  
Julia, almost nine years old.

“Can I sit by the window?” I begged, bouncing in my seat. Max groaned beside me and I elbowed him. He poked me in the side, but I knew he didn’t really care who sat where.

Mom looked at me in the rear-view mirror and smiled, “It doesn’t matter to me, you and Max figure it out.”

We were finally leaving for Scotland!

Granny had left a couple weeks ago and we’d meet her there. The last time we went back to Scotland was right after mom and Luke got married, which was two whole years ago. I missed my cousins and aunts and uncles who lived there and could hardly wait to see them all.

My little sister had never been there before, this was her first trip. I wasn’t really sure how she’d do on the long plane ride. It seemed like all she did was eat, sleep, and cry. Oh, and poop. So many dirty diapers. I hoped mom packed enough.

I slipped an earbud in and turned up my iPod. Max looked at the screen, rolling his eyes. “How many times are you going to listen to that?”

“A bajillion!” I declared, sticking out my tongue at him for good measure.

He tipped his head back and began to sing along at the top of his lungs, “Let it goooooooo, let it go! Can’t hold it back any moooooooore!”

“Moooom!” I complained as I shoved Max, making him bump into Fiona’s car seat which made her cry.

“Hey!” Luke called out from the driver seat. “Dull roar back there, you’re making the natives restless.”

This made mom laugh, he could always make mom laugh.

Something caught the corner of my eye and I turned to look out my window. The last thing I saw before the world went dark was a large, blue pickup truck headed straight for us.

…

Everything hurt. It hurt to move, it hurt to breathe, it hurt to think. So I didn’t. I hovered in empty space, just below consciousness and just above death until a familiar voice broke into my silence.

“Julia? Sweetie, can you hear me?”

It was Luke.

I tried to open my eyes, but they wouldn’t cooperate. I tried to reach for him, but something was holding my arms in place. I fought the feeling of weightlessness and struggled to the surface of reality. Moans of metal, feet scuffling, and a high pitched ring flooded my ears.

“Oh, God,” his voice cracked and I felt his hand brush against my cheek, “It’s ok. You’re ok. Try not to move, sweetie. Just lay still, alright?”

A deafening crunching sound echoed around me as whatever was holding me down shifted. It was easier to breathe now, yet it felt like ten thousand knives where jabbing me in the side every time I did. I tried to turn my face into Luke’s hand, to open my eyes and see him, but I couldn’t.

Why couldn’t I move? What was going on?

Tears burned at the back of my eyes and I heard a strange sound leave my mouth.

Had I made that noise?

I started to float again, even though I fought desperately to stay where I was. The pain was too much. Everything was too loud, the pull too strong.

“Julia!” the sound of Luke’s voice was distant, far out of reach. “Damn it, darling, stay with me!”

…  
September, 2015; Boston, Massachusetts.  
Julia, ten years old.

I sat cross legged on the ground in front of mom’s grave and fiddled with the laces of my shoes as I spoke to her, “I have a competition today.”

I’d begged Auntie Tif to stop here before she dropped me off at the dance studio. I had five minutes or we’d be late.

“My Sword Dance is getting really good. Granny said my Highland Fling at the meet last month was the best I’d ever done. I didn’t think so, but maybe you couldn’t see my mistakes from the audience… or she was just being Granny.”

Mom had gotten me started in Highland Dancing when we moved to Boston, sort of a way to keep Scotland with us in America. I liked it a lot and was now in the highest skill level for my age group. Granny hadn’t missed a single competition. She was my biggest fan.

“Oh, and we ordered a new aboyne for next season. The one I’ve got is getting really small. Granny found one that’s similar to the Murray clan tartan. Could you see Luke’s smile when we showed it to him? He’s really excited.”

A cloud of uneasiness swirled around me as I thought of my stepfather. I didn’t call him dad, but he was the only father I had ever known. We got along really well and I loved him to pieces.

“Something’s going on with Luke’s new job with the Navy and no one will tell me what it is. Max says he doesn’t know, but he does. Luke’s been going to D.C. a lot for it and is there more than he is here. I miss him.”

I heard the door of the minivan open and close and I knew my time was up.

“Tha gaol agam ort, Mommy,” I whispered.

…  
October 30th, 2017; Boston, Massachusetts  
Julia, aged twelve.

“You’re still taking me trick or treating tomorrow, right?” I asked Max as I ran to keep up with his long strides.

He looked down at me in annoyance, “Why don’t you go with Granny and Fiona?”

“Because they’re soooo slow,” I complained. “Besides, who wants to be seen trick or treating with their grandmother and baby sister?”

“You think I want to be seen with you?” He teased.

I glared at him, “Of course you do, I’ve got the best costume in the neighborhood.”

My Wonder Woman costume was a work of art.

“I suppose I should be grateful you’re not making me go as Steve Trevor,” he rolled his eyes.

“That would be gross, you’re my brother.” I pulled a face. “You’re more of a Steve Rogers than Steve Trevor, anyway.”

He laughed as we turned the corner. Beacon Hill Academy was in sight now and we picked up our pace.

Suddenly, a strong hand clamped around my mouth and pulled me off the sidewalk. I heard Max shout for help as I tried to get out of my attacker’s grasp. Biting him hard, I kicked backwards and lunged forwards at the same time.

It worked. I broke free momentarily before another set of arms picked me up off the ground and tossed me thru the open sliding door of a van. I screamed for all I was worth now that my mouth was uncovered.

“Julia!” Max shouted. The first man punched him hard in the stomach before climbing into the van and slamming the door shut.

…

The man who had grabbed me, I’d dubbed him Jasper, pulled the duct tape off my mouth and warned, “You start all that again and this goes right back on, you hear me?”

I had tried to escape out of the paneled van in every I could think of, earning me a special seat belt of tightly knotted rope. When getting out of this proved to be fruitless, I took a page out of little sister’s play book and started talking nonstop at the top of my lungs. Everything that passed thru my head went out my mouth… and I mean everything.

I insulted them, I mimicked them, I narrated their every move like a sports announcer. When that got boring, I asked questions about anything I could think of. Horace, the other guy, would answer sometimes until the lady driving the van yelled at him to shut up.

The duct tape came out when I started calling her Cruella.

Tears sprang to my eyes involuntarily as a layer of my skin got ripped off with the tape. Blinking fast, I answered, “That depends.”

Jasper looked at me warily, “On what?”

“On if you’re planning to feed me anytime soon,” my stomach growled, adding it’s two cents.

It was well after dinner time and we’d been driving south all day. They’d let me out at a disgusting gas station in New Jersey to use the bathroom when I threatened to go right where I was. I now knew this was a really good bargaining tool with them.

There was food in my backpack, but as my phone was also in there, and they hadn’t discovered I had one yet, I was not willing to unzip it in their presence. Cruella had accompanied me to the bathroom, of course, so I couldn’t send out a distress text. I had felt it vibrate several times in the last eight hours and desperately hoped they could track me even if I didn’t answer it.

Jasper moved to the back of the van from the front passenger seat, commenting menacingly, “You have to answer a few questions first.”

A fist closed around my stomach and I wasn’t sure I was hungry anymore, but I nodded.

“Where is your mother?” He began.

I stared at him blankly, then looked to Horace. My mother?

“Mount Hope Cemetery,” I answered simply, wondering why on earth they would need to kidnap me to figure that out. “Or heaven, depending on how you look at it.”

Horace visibly started in surprise and Jasper’s mouth hung open. “She’s dead?” they asked in unison.

I thought that only happened in movies.

“She’s talking about Campbell, you idiots. Ask her about Fraser,” Cruella screeched from the driver’s seat.

Understanding dawned on Jasper and he nodded, “Yeah, not her. Where’s your other mother?”

“My what?” This was getting ridiculous.

The van swerved as Cruella glared at me thru the rearview mirror. “Claire Fraser. Your birth mother. Where is she?”

My birth parents had abandoned me when I was two and had never contacted me since. The authorities had tried to locate them, but couldn’t figure out who they were, let alone where they were… and that was ten years ago.

“How would I know?” I replied incredulously.

Horace leaned forward and pinched me hard in the thigh, insisting, “Tell us!”

“I have no idea where she is.” I kicked him hard in the shins, “I didn’t even know her name until you just said it!”

“I don’t think she knows, boss.” Jasper muttered over his shoulder.

I could see Cruella shrug and the van lurched again. How we hadn’t crashed yet was beyond me.

“Well, what about the dad? They oughta be together, right?” Horace nudged Jasper, who nodded eagerly.

“Yeah, where’s your dad?”

Looking for me.

“If you’re talking about my birth father, I know as much about him as I do my birth mother.” I glared at them, “My real dad is out looking for me and probably has the entire Navy after you by now. He’s a cop, you know.”

Horace turned slightly pale at this. “I’m not going to jail for some fairy tale, love story nonsense, boss!”

Fairy tale, love story nonsense.

Wait.

What had she said my birth mother’s name was? Claire, right? As in Queen Claire from Granny’s story?

You have got to be kidding me. I’ve been abducted over a children’s bedtime story. Do they really think I’m some long lost princess?

“No one is going to jail!” Cruella barked, “Crawford didn’t think she knew anything anyway.”

Crawford. He must be the one orchestrating this. These three didn’t have the combined IQ of a goldfish.

“Then why kidnap me if I don’t know anything?” I asked, a heavy feeling forming in the pit of my stomach.

Jasper smiled, his face contorting into a look of sinister delight. “You’re his ticket thru the stones.”


	17. Wandering in the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julia confronts her kidnapper and takes yet another unexpected journey... this time through a ring of standing stones.

October 30th, 2017; Somewhere in the middle of the woods.  
Julia.

The sun had set long before we got to where we were going, which was apparently somewhere in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina. It was pouring down rain and the windshield wipers could barely keep up. If I hadn’t been tied to it, I think I would have bounced out of my seat with the amount of potholes we hit. I swear Cruella was purposely hitting them all.

Our progress came to a stop quite suddenly and I wondered if we had hit something. Jasper unbuckled himself and moved to untie me. “Now, no–” he began.

Rolling my eyes as far as they’d go, I interrupted him, “No funny business, I know.”

The circulation to my hands returned in a rush and I rubbed them on the skirt of my school uniform to try to stop the unpleasant sensation. It didn’t really help. I peered out the front window, wondering where we were. A dim glow shone thru the downpour, but aside from that I had no idea what lay outside.

Horace slid open the door of the van and yanked me out into the freezing rain. He pulled me along beside him, straight thru the giant puddles that filled the front walk. A door opened ahead of us, illuminating our muddy path in a strange fluorescent light.

There was a man standing in the doorway, a silhouetted figure menacingly blocking our way.

“Here she is, boss,” Horace shouted to be heard above a roll of thunder and shoved me forward. I tripped and all but fell at his feet, whoever he was.

He steadied me with a firm grip on my shoulder as he held me out at an arm’s length for inspection. The light was still coming from behind him, shining right in my eyes and making it impossible for me to see. “Damn, you look just like him,” the figure commented.

Like who, my elusive birth father? This guy knew him too?

I felt like a guest on one of those prank shows. Surprise! This has all an elaborate hoax with hidden cameras! You’ve now completed level five and won a lifetime supply of Fruit Loops! In addition to these wonderful prizes, you get to confront the people who abandoned you as a child! All without parental supervision!

His hand lay heavy on my shoulder and made it clear that he was in charge.

Was this Crawford?

I looked up at him to see what he looked like as he ushered me inside, but found a rather ordinary looking guy. He wasn’t overly tall, maybe a little above average height, and didn’t have any remarkable facial features. His nose was straight, his teeth even.

Whatever I had been expecting to see as I walked thru the door, it wasn’t this. There were bulletin boards everywhere, each one carefully organized and labeled. A small table was shoved into the corner with two rickety chairs sitting next to it. Every surface was piled high with books and stacks of papers.

“How was your trip?” the man I assumed to be Crawford asked nonchalantly, letting go of me as the door closed behind us.

“Unexpected,” I quipped, growing colder and more annoyed by the second.

“I see you’ve your mother’s tongue too.” He turned to me as he picked up an apple out of a bowl of fruit and tossed it to me, “Hungry?”

I caught it easily and studied it for a moment.

This man believed a fairy-tale to be scientific fact.

I’ve seen Snow White. I know how this goes down.

I was not about to eat an apple offered to me by the bad guy and I tossed it back. “You take a bite first.”

He cocked an eyebrow as he did so, “It’s not poisoned.”

“Please excuse me if I don’t believe you,” I muttered and took it from his outstretched hand. Crawford shrugged indifferently as I took a bite. The tart, crisp apple made my mouth water and I devoured more than half of it before speaking again. “I take it you knew my birth parents, then?”

His eyes were guarded and his jaw clenched as he answered, “In a way.”

He knew them all right.

Something had happened between them and Crawford had been on the losing side, “They left me in the rain to die, what’d they do to you?”

One corner of his mouth tugged upwards at my sarcasm, “No love lost there, hmm?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” I lowered the apple and spoke distinctly. “What did my parents do to you that you think kidnapping me will solve?”

“What haven’t they done?” He spat, his eyes cold as ice as he crossed the room to me. I backed up and bumped into another of his bulletin boards. Crawford brought his face in close to mine, making me flinch. “They’ve taken everything, everything, away from me. They ruined my life!”

His gaze suddenly latched onto something on the cork board beside me and he took a step to my left. I quickly moved away from him, looking to see what had caught his eye.

It was a photograph.

The whole board was covered in them, all neatly spaced in rows. An iron band tightened around my chest as I realized my whole entire family was there. All of them, even our golden retriever Rudy had his own print. My eyes moved from one 4x6 to the next as something dawned on me.

Not one of them was looking at the camera.

They were surveillance photos.

I felt like I was going to be sick as I realized he had been watching us for years. All of these photos were taken in public places: the farmer’s market Granny loved, South Shore Plaza, the parking lot outside the clinic mom worked at, even some from one of dance competitions.

There were older photos pinned up too. Square black and white ones with dates from the 1940s, hand tinted portraits of solemn looking men and women, even a few faded color prints from what I guessed was the sixties.

A large print of a bride and groom smiled at me in smartly tailored clothing. “Our wedding - March 10th, 1938” was printed neatly on the white border of the photograph. I didn’t recognize them from the thick family album Granny kept in her bureau, but, yet, something seemed eerily familiar.

Crawford was reverently stroking a photograph of a little girl eating an ice cream cone at the beach.

I could see it clearly from where I stood, although it was on the other end of the board. The resemblance to me was uncanny and I would have sworn it was me if I hadn’t noticed the date stamped in the corner.

July 4th, 1956.

She couldn’t be my mother, she’d be nearly seventy by now.

“Who is that?” I asked, “My grandmother?”

Not Granny, but my birth grandmother.

What is she like? Or was she like? Is she still living? Does she know I exist?

His lips morphed into a strange sort of smile. Not plotting and calculated like Jasper’s, but somehow wistful and tender. It looked completely out of place on the man who had just shoved me against a wall. “No, but she is related to you.”

“How? What’s her name?” I asked.

He answered simply, “Brianna.”

You have got to be kidding me, not this load of crap again.

“Don’t tell me,” I exploded, throwing the apple at his head. He ducked just in time and it bounced off a photograph of a ruined castle with the name Leoch printed under it, “She’s the brave and daring Princess Brianna who flees to the east to escape from the evil dragon Randall with her noble knight Sir Roger? Of course, she is! Oh, and she’s also Queen Claire’s daughter, which makes me her sister? Because, you know, I’m the treasured lost princess who is going to save the kingdom, right?”

Crawford stared at me, wide eyed. “What?”

“Granny’s bedtime story. You obviously think that it’s true.” I fumed.

“This thing?” He walked over to the table and came back with a small bound book.

Uncle Mike convinced Granny to write the fairy tale down when he heard it. He’d used his contacts at the university to get it printed and Auntie Tiff had illustrated it. There had only been three copies made. I had one, Uncle Mike had one, and Granny had the other safely tucked away for my children to read someday.

My mouth was suddenly dry. Photos taken in a public place was one thing, but this was entirely another. “How did you get this?”

He shrugged but didn’t answer, instead commenting “The names are right, but the old lady took a few creative liberties. I find it funny that she made me into a dragon.”

“Wait, you’re Randall?”

“It’s complicated,” he answered and walked away from me.

“Its complicated? I get kidnapped on the basis of a completely made up story, that you claim to be the bad guy in, and all you’ll tell me is that its complicated?“ I shouted.

He didn’t look at me, but replied, “I’m not the bad guy.”

I picked the forgotten apple up off the floor and hurled it at him. It bounced off the top of his head with a satisfying thud as I screeched, “Says the man who abducted me!”

“Enough!” He commanded as he spun around. “There are some things you won’t understand until we get there. Until then, nothing I say will make any sense.”

I crossed my arms and leveled him with the deadliest look I could manage, “And just were are we going?”

It must have worked, because he squirmed as he answered, “The past.”

…

They left me alone in the shack. I couldn’t believe it. They were all standing right outside the door, so I knew I couldn’t make a run for it out the lone window, but I could do something.

Digging hastily in my backpack, I grabbed hold of my phone and pulled it out. One bar of service. I thanked my lucky stars that I even had that much and called Luke.

The phone rang once… twice… three times… what if he didn’t pick up?

Suddenly, I could hear his voice say my name thru the static. “Julia? Sweetie, is that you?”

“Luke?”

Relief washed over me as he asked me a thousand questions at once, “Are you alright? Where are you? What happened?”

“I’m ok,” I struggled to keep my voice from being heard and pinched myself to keep from crying as I tried to give him as much information as I possibly could. “We drove for a really long time and now I’m in the woods. I think we’re in North Carolina. One guy’s name is Crawford, but I don’t know—”

Just as I spoke his name, he burst thru the door and grabbed the phone from my ear He glared at me and his henchmen in turn as he exclaimed, “You didn’t check her bag?”

Horace, Jasper, and Cruella all tried to explain at the same time in a jumbled mess of excuses. Crawford motioned for them to be quiet as he hit the speakerphone button, an unfamiliar voice sounding incredibly loud in the now silent shack.

“Who am I speaking to?”

Crawford gave me a sickening smile and answered into the phone, “I could ask the same of you.”

Jasper suddenly grabbed hold of me and shoved me into a seated position on one of the chairs.

“Hey! That hurt!” I shouted, more so the man on the phone could hear me than in actual pain. Jasper clamped his hand hard over my mouth and squeezed tight. I tried to scream, but only a muffled sound escaped his vice-like grip.

“You don’t know the meaning of that word, girl,” he hissed in my ear.

“This is Special Agent Gibbs,” the voice spoke. Gibbs. Wasn’t he the agent Luke always talked about? The man was something of a god in his eyes. “What are your demands?”

“Who said I was demanding anything?” Crawford strolled about the room like it was a casual Sunday walk about the park.

Horace laughed, “Good one, boss!”

The sly smile disappeared off of Crawford’s face as he rounded on the portly man, giving him an uppercut that knocked him to the ground.

“I have everything I want!” he shouted into the phone and forcibly hung up, throwing the object to the ground.

He turned to me and grabbed a fistful of my hair. He yanked my head backwards as he shoved his face in mine, “You try something like that again and I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Kill me? You obviously need me alive,” I spit in his face, forcing a smug smile.

“You think this is funny?” He demanded, smacking me full across the face.

My head pulled to the side with the force of it and I cried out involuntarily. His ring had left burning line across my cheekbone. I lifted my hand to my face, my fingers wet with blood as he added, “Nothing about what your parents did to me is funny!”

…

I noticed the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle as they shoved me out of the rickety cabin door. The moon was full and remarkably bright, casting everything into eerie shadows. They had bound my hands in front of me, making me feel every bit like the captive that I was. It was ridiculously cold and our hurried movements did little to warm me.

We didn’t seem to be following a trail of any sort, just stumbling behind Crawford as he led the way with a GPS map on his phone and a flashlight. I could see a red blinking dot that must be where we were going. They wouldn’t tell me much about where or what we were headed to, save that the site was rumored to be supernatural like Craigh na Dun.

Just my luck, I thought for the thousandth time today, I’ve been abducted by a psychopath.

While I wasn’t far from the standing stones of Craigh na Dun when mom and I lived in Scotland, I’d never been there myself. Granny had told me all sorts of tales about the fairy-hill, but I’d never believed them to be true. I took them for what they were: folk tales that, at some point in time, were based in real life events but were now so over exaggerated that they held little resemblance to the truth.

Our leader suddenly turned to the left and began to climb up a steep embankment. Unable to grab onto branches and rocks like the rest of them, I constantly slid back down the hill. Horace pushed me upwards from behind, grumbling the whole way to the top. The wind was stronger up here and it made a whistling sound in the bare trees.

Something else was different. There was a strange vibrating feeling surging thru the air. It pulsated thru my bones like one of those massage chairs. I didn’t like it one bit.

“Stop,” I insisted, escaping Horace’s grasp and moving towards Crawford… or Randall. Whoever he was. “Why are we here?”

“To find your parents,” he answered without looking at me.

I peered uneasily around the clearing. Just in front of me stood a ring of tall stones with the biggest in the middle of the circle. “Where are they?” I asked, worried they’d suddenly pop out at me from behind one of them.

He pulled me into the circle and looked down with a sickening grin, “On the other side of the stones.”

“Let me go!” I shouted, trying to back out of the circle. My skin tingled and a loud humming sound now accompanied the overwhelming vibrating sensation. Whatever it was was stronger inside the ring of stones.

His hand tightened on my arm as he growled, “Not a chance. You’re the only way I can get thru the blasted thing.”

“Thru that?” I asked incredulously, and then realized we stood some three feet away from the center stone. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“I wish I were,” he commented and took a step towards it.

I dug in my heels, almost sitting down in my effort to halt all forward progress. Crawford cursed as he lifted me off the ground by my upper arms. He set me down roughly mere inches from the stone and crouched down low behind me, almost as if he were hiding from something.

Hiding from what? What would happen if I touched it?

I had no idea and I did not want to find out.

Slamming my head back as far and as hard as I could, I connected with Crawford’s nose. He let go of me and fell to the ground. I turned to run, but before I could get out of his reach, he grabbed hold of my foot. I stumbled and fell forwards, throwing my bound hands out in front of me to keep from falling on my face.

Something smooth and cold brushed against my fingertips as the world suddenly turned upside down.

…

I woke sometime later, face down in the dirt. Light was beginning to paint the sky in the east as I scrambled to my feet. Turning wildly about, I found myself alone in the stone circle.

Where had everyone gone?

I had no idea where I was. A little voice in my head reminded me that if I was lost, I should stay put so that I would be easier to find.

Except, I didn’t want to be found. Not by Crawford and his henchmen anyway. Deciding to leave the circle in the opposite direction that I had come, I was careful not to make a whole lot of sound as I slowly made my way thru the woods.

Climbing over fallen logs and slippery boulders was hard when you had your hands tied. I hid behind a large oak as I sat down to try to get out of my shackles. All I accomplished was making my wrists raw and the knots tighter.

Giving that up, I continued on. I didn’t have any plans of where I was trying to go and I realized that all I was doing was getting myself lost. If I had to choose between being lost in the woods and held captive by Crawford and his goons, I’d be lost any day.

My thoughts were occupied with calculating how long I could manage on the snacks in my backpack and I didn’t notice the terrain begin to change. Losing my footing on wet leaves, I landed hard on my butt and began to slide down an embankment at an alarming speed. I tumbled end over end as I tried to catch hold of something to stop me. A sickening popping noise came from my left shoulder as my arm twisted in a way it was not intended to move, making me cry out in pain.

I came to a sudden and complete stop against a large tree and the world slowly began to stop spinning. I tried to take stock of my injuries as I lay on the wet ground, but was interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching.

Crawford.

Scrambling to my feet and wincing, I desperately looked for a place to hide. I wasn’t sure if it would do any good, as I probably made enough noise to wake the dead in my descent, but made my way over to a fallen log as fast as I could. I laid down on my back on the other side and tried to slow my breathing. My shoulder radiated pain with every movement, making me bite my lip to keep from crying out.

The footsteps grew closer and I held my breath.

“I willna hurt ye,” a voice coaxed gently, “if tha’s wha’ ye fear.”

I peered hesitantly over the log and found myself face to face with a huge redheaded man who was crouching low to the ground, his eyes alight with curiosity and concern. His face softened as he took in my haphazard appearance and I thought maybe he would be a friend instead of a foe. I could use a friend right about now.

“Hi,” I whispered.

“Hello,” he whispered back with a smile.

Relief washed over me as I realized I was finally safe.


	18. The Lost Has Been Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie stumbles upon his long lost daughter in the woods.

October 31st, 1767; Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina.  
Jamie.

A loud crashing noise came from somewhere above me on the bluff, setting me on a new path thru the forest. My steps hastened as a child’s cry echoed thru the trees.

Where on earth had they come from? There wasn’t a family with children for miles. Whoever they were and for whatever reason they were here, they obviously were in trouble. The rustling ahead of me stopped for a moment, then began again in earnest, headed in a different direction. I caught sight of a flash of blue as it disappeared behind a fallen log.

“I willna hurt ye, if tha’s wha’ he fear.” I called gently, not wishing to scare the poor thing.

The child was silent for a moment before peering cautiously over the log. A brilliant thatch of auburn curls stuck out in every direction, tangled with leaves and other debris. I smiled at the child’s intense focus on me and watched as their brows relaxed in relief. With a slight whimper, they sat up taller.

What was a wee lassie like this doing out here all alone?

“Hi,” she whispered tentatively.

My heart broke at the vulnerable expression on her face, the sudden urge to take her in my arms and hold her close overwhelmed me. Something about the angle of her jaw and the set of her eyes made my bones ache with longing for the daughter who I may never see again. My first born, mo beag calman geal, my Julia. I thought she maybe resembled the photographs of Brianna, as well, but it was her elder sister I thought of when I looked at this child.

I swallowed hard as I replied in the same hushed tone, “Hello.”

“Are ye injured, lass?” I asked, breaking an awkward silence. I could see a good sized cut along her cheekbone, as well as another traveling along her hairline. She still hadn’t made a move to stand, making me wonder if a larger injury was preventing her from doing so.

Her gaze flicked away for a moment, “I’m fine.”

She was soaking wet, shivering, and in pain, but far from fine.

“My wife an’ I can help ye,” I kept my voice casual; not wanting her to feel like I was calling her bluff, but needing her to know this, “We live no’ far from here. Do ye think ye can walk?”

She nodded and clumsily rose to her feet, visibly wincing.

My heart dropped to my boots as I saw her bound hands. The skin beneath the rope was raw, even bleeding in some places. She was obviously on the run from whoever had done this to her. I took in her short, plaid skirt and bunched stockings, which left her completely bare from knees to ankles. What sort of monster had held her captive, dressing her in such a way?

“Let me cut the rope for ye, aye?” I explained as I reached for my dirk.

“Thanks,” she murmured and reached her hands out over the log.

Pain contorted her face as I realized her left shoulder hung at an odd angle. I didn’t need Claire to tell me that she had dislocated it. Having experienced such an injury before myself, I knew the agony she must be in. I hastily cut the cords and she cradled her left arm gently in her right, her face paling considerably. She refused my hand in assistance as she climbed over the log and stood trembling at my feet.

Stubborn lass.

I shrugged off my coat and draped it around her. She thanked me again, giving me a ghost of a smile.

“Where do you live?” She asked, eyes darting around the forest.

I turned and gestured over my shoulder to the west, “On the other side of those pines, no’ far.”

Unsure as to how steady she was on her feet, I was incredibly thankful for the short distance between here and the cabin. Her lips were pressed into the thin, white line of pain and she rapidly blinked back tears as we walked.

She was slender and finely built, the neatly manicured hand poking out of my rough homespun sleeve boasted a gentle upbringing. She spoke without a hint of a German accent, ruling out the settlement of Salem as her residence. I knew I would have remembered seeing such a child in Cross Creek and ruled that out as well.

Where on earth had she come from?

“Ye dinna live near here, do ye? Are ye from Charlotte or even Wilmington, perhaps?” I kept my voice conversational, not wanting her to feel cornered into answering, but dying to know.

She started at the sudden break in the silence, then looked up at me as she answered, “No. I’m from Boston.”

“Boston?” I repeated.

Far from home, indeed.

She nodded and wiped her nose on the sleeve of my coat. “Where are we, anyway?”

While not an unreasonable question, it did pose a challenge in answering. How much did she know of where she was?

“Well,” I drew out the word, deciding spur of the moment to start broad and work our way back to the ridge. “We’re in North Carolina.”

“I know that, but what town?” She countered.

Town?

“Cross Creek is tha’ way, a day’s ride from here.” I gestured, unsure how to answer her. “Salem’s to the south an’ a good deal farther.”

She halted quite suddenly beside me, “Ride? On what, a horse?”

“Ah, aye, ‘tis longer on foot,” I stammered and shifted uneasily as we stood staring at each other.

“You live all the way out here and you don’t have a car?” She asked incredulously.

I looked down at her in complete confusion, “Dinna have a wha’?”

“What’s your name?” she whispered as the little remaining color drained from her face.

What did my name have to do with anything? And what on earth was a car?

“James Fraser,” I answered simply, then lurched forward as the girl spun on her heel and tried to run away. “Fuirichibh! Wait!”

Grabbing her about the waist, keeping in mind her shoulder, I deposited her rather unceremoniously on top of a large boulder. She kicked and screamed in protest, pounding me in the chest with her good hand. “Stop it! Let me go!”

“I will, if ye promise no’ to run awa’ like tha’ again,” I caught her fist just before it collided with my jaw and reasoned with her. “I willna hurt ye, lass. Will ye no’ stop hurtin’ me?”

“No, let me go!” She squirmed.

“Gu leoir,” I muttered under my breath as I received a good, swift kick in the shin. “I’m just tryin’ to help ye!”

A flow of perfectly accented Gaelic spewed from her lips and I dropped her hand in surprise. Slapping me full across the face, she shrieked in my mother tongue, “You abandoned me and now you want to help?”

Her words sucked the very breath from my lungs, leaving me gasping for air.

You abandoned me.

I looked at her then, really looked at her, and my heart skidded to a stop. Her eyes were a deep blue, slightly slanted like my own and my mother’s before me. She had Claire’s delicate lips and thin brows. Claire’s riotous curls too, although the coloring was definitely mine. A smattering of freckles graced her nose and cheeks.

She couldn’t be, and yet she was.

“Julia,” her name spilled from my lips as tears blurred my vision.

Her cheeks were flushed in anger, her own tears pouring forth as she continued, “It’s all your fault! You’re the reason why they kidnapped me! They wanted you! You and her!”

“Who has done this to ye?” I asked, my heart clattering to life again at the reminder that she was in danger.

“I don’t know!” She cried, trying to explain. “He said he knew you. They called him Crawford, but he said his name was Randall.”

Randall.

Blind instinct kicked in as I scooped her up and ran the last two hundred yards to the cabin door. Running from what, I didn’t know, but if a man by the name Randall had done this to my daughter in order to get to me, I needed Claire and I needed her now.


	19. More Questions Than Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire is reunited with Julia on Fraser's Ridge.

October 31st, 1767; Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina  
Claire.

“Claire?!” Jamie’s voice was urgent, almost panicked, as it drifted thru the open door of my surgery.

I dropped the bundle of herbs I’d been working with and hastened towards the sound, colliding head-on with Ian as I did so. We awkwardly tried to step out of each other’s way, only succeeding in treading on toes and making a general mess of things.

“Bring yer box,” my nephew rambled excitedly, “Uncle found a lass in the wood an’ she’s hurtin’ somethin’ fierce. He says he isna injured, but I havena seen him look this way before, Auntie.”

I had turned to grab my supplies as soon as the words were out of his mouth and now shoved them into Ian’s hands.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I pushed past him, needing to see my husband for myself. The knowledge that Jamie would never admit to being in pain in front of his nephew formed a tight band of worry across my chest.

Ian followed close behind me and answered, still talking a mile a minute, “He’s white as a sheet an’ trembling from head to toe. Told me to be watchful, but I dinna ken wha’ I’m looking for!”

Jamie was in sight now, and I felt a small measure of relief as I scanned him for visible injuries: neither he, nor the person he was carrying, sported any large patches of blood. The size of the girl in his arms was hard to judge, Jamie’s bulk made her appear small and frail. She was wrapped in his jacket and I wondered what sort of injury it may be hiding.

Her bare legs dangled over his arm as he cradled her, but what stopped me in my tracks were her shoes.

They were leather, but the soles were rubber, the buckles small and delicate, the stitching machine fashioned. My gaze traveled along her body and fixated on the tuft of auburn curls poking out of the top of the coat.

“Claire…” Jamie repeated my name, unable to say more. His face was ashen and I could see him trembling from my place across the dooryard. He blinked back tears, his chest heaving from the effort it took to not break down completely.

It couldn’t be.

I moved towards Jamie, unable to feel the ground beneath my feet.

You’re dreaming, my heart warned, this is just another dream. You’ll wake up beside Jamie any moment now and Julia will be gone. This isn’t real.

My hand shook as I reached out to pull the garment away from her face. The curve of her cheekbones and set of her eyes were enough to send my heart to my toes. I sagged into Jamie, unable to stand alone any longer. A small cry of pain escaped Julia’s lips as Jamie adjusted his stance to support the both of us.

I’m here, my love. Mama’s here. Please don’t cry, my soul whispered, just as it had that day so many years ago.

Visions of the day she was born, the day she was torn from me, and every moment between flashed before my eyes in a kaleidoscope of emotions. Our time alone in Paris. The endless nights spent wondering if she’d live to see the dawn. I heard the sound of her laughter, the lilt of her voice as she chattered to us. Her words rang fresh in my mind, as if she had said them just the moment before.

Love Mim. Love Da.

“And I love you, Julia Ellen,” I whispered as I cradled her face in my hands. My thumb wiped away a trail of tears running down her cheek, careful to avoid the ragged line of broken skin along her cheekbone. Her eyelids flickered, but didn’t open.

Jamie shifted Julia in his arms, holding on tighter to our miracle. Her face contorted in pain as she cried out in earnest. The sound sent shock waves down my spine, spurring me into action.

“Lay her on the bed, Jamie.” I asked and commanded all in the same breath, moving towards the cabin without letting go of Jaime. I half lead, half dragged the two of them into the cabin and across dim interior.

Jamie bent and wordlessly set her down atop the down mattress. Released from the support of her father’s arms, Julia tried to curl herself into a ball, instinctively protecting herself from the outside world.

“I’ve got you, darling.” I murmured, tucking a stray curl behind her ear and taking her hand in mine. “It’s alright, love, I’m right here.”

Julia recoiled, her eyes opening wide as she screeched, “Go away!“

“Yer safe now, a leannain, I promise.” Jamie assured her as he hastily sat down and tried to reach for her as well.

Tears blurred my vision as Julia tried to move away from us. Inch by inch she scooted towards the wall, fiercely clutching her left arm as she did so. She rolled herself into a sitting position and huddled against it, her chin quivering as she tried to speak forcefully, “I want to go home!”

“I ken ye do, but, please,” Jamie’s voice broke at the word as he begged from the edge of the bed, “will ye no’ let us help ye?” 

“Not until you tell me.” Julia glared at Jamie, measuring him carefully.

Stretching out his hands to her, he vowed. “I’ll tell ye anything, a chuisle.”

“Why?” Her voice was barely above a whisper, “Why did you abandon me?”

The room began to spin before me as I tried to open my mouth to explain. The words stuck in my throat, choking me as I blindly reached for Jamie. He gathered me into his arms, answering for me, “We didna. Ye were taken from us.”

“By who?”

“Well,” he drew out the word, “it wasna really a person.”

“If you say I was abducted by fairies, I’m going to throw this pillow at you,” Julia responded dryly.

I felt Jamie chuckle and couldn’t help but smile thru my tears.

“Nae, it wasna the wee folk. May I ask ye a question, lass?”

There was a pause before she hesitantly agreed.

His voice was low, resonating deeply against me as I clung to him.

“What year is it?”

...

Jamie flinched as a pillow flew thru the air. It brushed the top of his head, landing on the floor behind him.

“You’re lying!” Julia bellowed, quickly rearming herself.

Jamie tried to placate his daughter, arms outstretched in surrender, “I ken ‘tis a lot to take in at one time, a leannain, but I prom—mphff.”

The next hit him square in the face.

“Don’t you dare promise me anything!” She stood on the bed, towering above us as she swayed slightly in her vehemence.

Seeing that she was now out of ammunition, I tested the waters. “What do you want us to say, love? What can we do?”

This gave Julia pause and she glared at us in silence. She was slowly starting to lose her resolve, her pain and our unwillingness to match her fury knocking down her last defenses. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she begged, “Make it stop.”

I scrambled over the bed, rising up on my knees as I took her into my arms. She didn’t protest or move away, but melted into me. Her whole body shook as she sobbed. Easing the both of us into a sitting position, I gently swayed back and forth, my eyes sliding shut as a flood of emotions threatened to overtake me.

I was holding her. The child who I had so longed for was here, cradled in my arms. She was alive and whole. Injured and in pain, yes, but her wounds would heal with time and a mother’s touch.

Julia sniffed loudly in my ear and I felt Jamie press a handkerchief into my hand. I opened my eyes to find him beside me, his own tears flowing unchecked.

“It will be alright,” I whispered.

I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but I knew deep within my heart that all would be well.

Julia was here, nothing else mattered.

…

Shoulder now set back into place, Julia sat cross legged on the floor before the fire, blinking owlishly.

“Would you like to lay down?” I asked gently.

She straightened, shaking her head adamantly. The action woke her up a bit and her face regained it’s determined expression. I had to turn away to keep her from seeing my amused smile, I knew she wouldn’t like being laughed at.

How many times had Bree worn the same expression when faced with a problem she needed to solve?

A problem.

The reality of everything hit me like a ton of bricks.

Twenty years had gone by, in both Jamie’s time and mine, when I returned a year ago. Bree would be twenty-one come the end of the month, which would make Julia…

Twenty-three.

The child on the floor before me couldn’t be a day older than twelve, say nothing about being older than Bree or even Ian.

How was this possible?

I turned further away from the fire, searching for Jamie in the shadows of the cabin. Julia was in no condition to explain and I needed answers. I found him silhouetted in the doorway with Ian, the their heads bent in urgent discussion. They knew something, they knew of a danger afoot and were preparing against it.

Crossing the room, I interrupted them, “Tell me what’s going on.”

Jamie placed a hand on the small of my back as he led me out of the cabin, “The man who took Julia, or maybe one of his men, is here on the Ridge.”

“Who is he?” I asked, a cold fist tightening around my heart.

Julia hadn’t identified her abductor in her brief rundown of the situation, only telling Jamie that he had said he could go thru the stones and wasn’t there when she had woken up. She had given him detailed information on the man’s henchmen and Jamie had sent Ian into the forest to find out what he could.

“She told me his name is Randall,” Jamie answered slowly.

I would have thought my world couldn’t be turned any further upside down than it had been in the last two hours, but a single word, a solitary name, made it possible.

“What?!” I pulled away from Jamie, stumbling over something before sitting down hard on the bench beside the door.

“She said that he kens us an’ we’re the reason she was taken,” he collapsed onto the ground before me as his voice cracked. “Tha’ ‘twas in order to get to us.”

This wasn’t possible.

None of this was possible.

Frank had died in 1966, over fifty years before the year Julia said she had left. I saw his dead body, attended his funeral, buried him in Boston.

Black Jack Randall had been killed on Culloden Moor, two hundred and twenty years before that. It was a documented historical fact that he was dead.

Neither Black Jack nor Frank could have traveled to the future to kidnap my daughter, especially since I wasn’t sure Jack Randall was even aware of her existence and I knew for certain that Frank wasn’t.

No, dead men couldn’t travel thru time and both were securely in their graves.

Swallowing hard, I asked, “How? How is this possible?”

“I dinna ken, Claire,” Jamie shook his head, his eyes mirroring the panic and bone chilling fear that I felt within me. “All I ken is tha’ the men who want to harm her are here.”

“You’ve seen them?” I turned to Ian, Rollo’s bulk brushing past me as the dog lumbered into the cabin.

Ian cleared his throat before answering in definite authority, “Aye, auntie, I have.”

He looked so formidable, his stance wide and arms crossed, as if the gravity of the situation fell on his shoulders.

In a way it did.

Jamie wasn’t yet willing to leave Julia’s side, instead, he entrusted the assessment of the surrounding forest to Ian. I knew they would trade places soon enough and Jamie would then leave the protection of his wife and child in the capable hands of his nephew, something the lad did not take lightly.

“Are they close?” I swallowed hard. “How many of them are there?”

“Two men. They’re headed down the ridge, awa’ from us,” Ian reported

The slow, calming feeling of relief washed over me. “So they don’t know she’s here, at the cabin?”

“No’ likely,” he shook his head.

I took hold of Jamie’s hand in both of mine, needing to feel the weight and strength of him. He squeezed them gently, communicating ‘she’s safe’ without saying a word.

…

Julia was sound asleep on the floor, using Ian’s faithful Rollo as a pillow. She’d been this way for a good hour now, but I couldn’t tear myself away from her. I sat on a stool beside her and simply watched her sleep.

In my mind’s eye, I saw Bree at this age. Curled up Frank’s wingback chair and lost in a book, beaming as she handed me an exemplary report card, and twirling about the kitchen in her new dress as she anxiously awaited midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

They were so similar in looks, both inheriting their father’s height and coloring, but there were little things about her that made her distinctly Julia.

Soon after learning to walk, Julia had tumbled headlong down the front steps at Lallybroch, leaving her with a small white scar above her right eyebrow. Her hair was wilder than Bree’s, the curls flouncing around her shoulders with abandon; where Bree’s had been wispier and only showed themselves on a hot summer’s day. She had more freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks than Bree did, too.

Julia sighed and shifted against Rollo, her brows tugging together as she moved.

I wish I had something to give her for the pain, but sleep was the only remedy I could provide.

Sleep and time.

Oh God, please, that we’d have time.

Time to heal, time to live.

The small stone in Lallybroch’s graveyard beckoned, reminding me that everyday I had with Julia was borrowed. She was once again cheating death by being here with me.

How long would we have this time? A year? Maybe five? Ten?

The urge to scoop her off the floor and run as far away from Scotland as possible was overpowering. If I could just keep her from ever setting foot in her homeland, she’d be safe. She’d stay with me and live until she was old and gray.

Please, let me have more time.


	20. In the Tree Tops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie goes in search for the men who abducted Julia.

Evening, October 31st, 1767; Fraser’s Ridge  
Jamie.

Instead of tracking the two men Ian had spotted, I left the cabin to find the stones themselves and, hopefully, determine if the remaining man and the woman had taken a different path down the ridge or if they had made it thru the stones at all.

I quickly found the place where I discovered Julia and continued uphill from there. She’d been focused on escaping her captors, not covering her tracks, and it was easy to follow her trail. I’d been over almost every inch of the land around our cabin in the months we’d lived here, and had summited the crest several times, but, somehow, I’d not explored this area of the ridge.

The going was slow, the terrain becoming cumbersome for my mount to climb, but he didn’t seem to mind the challenge. My tedious pace had me impatiently searching the underbrush for any signs of Julia’s captors, when suddenly, a flash of vibrant blue caught my eye. The color was unnatural, completely out of place in the dull browns, yellows, and evergreen of the autumn forest.

I turned away from Julia’s tracks and headed towards whatever it was. Seeing it was well entangled in a bush, I swung down to take a closer look. Carefully tugging it free, I quickly realized my mistake. It was some sort of satchel or saddle bag and I had picked it up from the bottom.

A good many things fell out before I could take hold of the other end, which significantly lightened the bag. The heaviest objects, mostly books, managed to land squarely on my toes. One fell open, it’s pages stark white against the mud.

A single word reached out of the text, a solid fist knocking the breath from my lungs.

Leoch.

I snatched up the book and read the two sentences printed on the page.  
“The week before Princess Julia’s birthday, King James announced that he would be throwing a grand ball in her honor. Everyone in the kingdom was invited to come to Castle Leoch to celebrate.”

Above the text was a painting of a young, redheaded lass. Her blue gown billowed around her as she strode hand in hand with a tall Highlander. The word Leoch had suffocated me, but now the very ground beneath my feet seemed to fall away as I realized he, presumably the King James, was wearing the Fraser plaid.

I collapsed to my knees, flipping the pages of book to its very beginning.  
“Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Lallybroch…”

…

I gripped the book tightly against my chest as I left the world of the story and slowly became aware of my surroundings. The damp earth had long ago crept its icy chill into my bones and a cold rain was now beginning to fall, the droplets mingling with my tears as they dripped off my chin.

She is here. She is safe, I repeated, forcing myself to remember. Safe.

The solidly built cabin and the aptitude of my wife and nephew would, would without a doubt, keep her safe until I returned. This satchel of Julia’s was the first sign I’d found of anyone else being on the ridge, so maybe they had, indeed, all left and gone to Cross Creek.

Wait.

Julia had taken this satchel off as Claire cared for her shoulder.

She’d had it with her when I left the cabin.

The realization that Julia was somehow no longer guarded by her mother and cousin had me back on my feet in moments. Scooping up the items that had fallen out, I shoved them hastily into the bag. I moved to secure it to my saddle, but froze, the overwhelming sense that I was being watched suddenly surrounding me.

Was it Julia?

“I ken ye are there,” I spoke slowly and without reprimand, hoping she’d respond in some way and not run as she had the last time.

“I’d expect nothing less from you,” a deep, male voice resonated behind me.

My stomach clenched as I took my dirk in hand and turned, ready to pounce.

But he wasn’t Randall.

The man’s stocky, pale appearance assured me that he was neither the embodiment of Black Jack nor Claire’s Frank. He could very well be a relation, though, acting on his predecessor’s hatred, and it was this thought that kept me from breathing a sigh of relief.

Or lowering my weapon.

“Your quarrel is wi’ me,” I spit. “Leave my family alone.”

One brow rose in amusement, “Oh, this isn’t my quarrel, Fraser. I’m just here to make sure all goes as planned.”

“And wha’ plan might that be?” I stepped menacingly towards him.

His gaze suddenly focused on something behind me and he started to retreat.

I hadn’t time to turn to see what it was before a wild mass of black fur whizzed past me, tackling the man to the ground. It sat on his chest, snarling and growling, looking for all the world like a small bear. The beast didn’t try to snap at or bite him, only pinned him to the ground with its bulk.

“I believe the he asked you a question, Jones,” a second man stepped from behind a tree.

Where in hell were these men coming from?

“Call him off!” Jones begged, trying to get out from under the beast.

I watched the newcomer smile, his teeth gleaming white against his tanned skin in an almost sinister expression. “That depends a great deal on your answer.”

“I’ll tell you anything,” he screeched, “just call him off!”

“Backup, Sampson,” came the command.

The beast sat back on its haunches, still growling, but was no longer inches from Jones’ face.

“Are you alright up there, Julia?”

I followed the man’s gaze and spotted my daughter desperately clinging to a branch, some twelve feet up in a tree. I dropped the satchel to my feet and sprinted to the base of it.

She didn’t answer the man, but looked down at me, her eyes pleading.

“I’m coming, Julia,” I assured her as I found my first foothold and pulled myself into the tree. “Just dinna let go.”

She shifted and got a better grip, sending a barrage of tree bark and wet leaves onto my head. A small whimper escaped her lips and I was suddenly aware of the fact that she was heavily relying on her injured arm to stay in the tree. The rough oak was large, its limbs sturdy and nicely spaced, but a surge of panic washed over me as I wondered if I’d make it to her before her arm gave out.

Would she be able to climb down without the use of her shoulder?

Climbing up single-handedly was one thing, but down was entirely another. I had my doubts as to how well I could manage such a feat, and knew that she wouldn’t be able to without falling.

Forcing myself to not think of the many ways this could turn sour, I encouraged her as the gap between us grew smaller, “Aye, that’s the way.”

She inched towards me, bit by bit, then lowered herself onto a branch just out of my reach and burst into tears.

“I can’t do it, I’m stuck!” She wailed in both English and Gaelic.

I stepped onto a limb that was conveniently a little below hers, which set me at a perfect height to be eye to eye with my daughter. Keeping a firm hold of the tree, I pulled her into my one armed embrace. She wrapped her arms about my neck and clung to me for dear life.

“Shh, a leannain. I’ve got ye,” I crooned. “I willna let ye go.”


	21. In the Tree Tops Pt 2

Autumn 1767, Fraser’s Ridge.  
Claire.

“Where’s Julia?” I asked of Ian, scanning the paddock as an uneasy feeling began to form in the pit of my stomach.

His brows were knit together as he looked up from his work, “She said she was chilled an’ wished to go within.”

My chest tightened and I felt the blood drain from my face, the ground seeming to drop out beneath my feet. I’d just come from the cabin and knew for a fact that she wasn’t inside. She’d left. She’d run. She was gone.

“This way, Auntie,” Ian bounded over the fence and snatched up the lantern on his way past. “She’d go north, up the ridge.”

Oh God, please…

My soul couldn’t finish the request, wouldn’t put words to the thought of being separated from her again, but it was this very possibility — that she’d find the stones again before we found her — that propelled me into motion. I thundered through the underbrush with her name on my lips, calling again and again for the one my heart yearned for. Ian’s voice joined mine and together we cleared every inch of the Ridge, climbing higher and higher.

Suddenly, his hand reached out and grabbed my arm as he motioned for me to be silent. I did so, holding my breath as my ears strained to hear what he had. I caught the sound of conversation — decidedly male — and my heart leapt into my throat, only to relax slightly as I recognized Jamie’s rich burr resonating through the disagreement.

We crept closer, careful not to give our presence away, and could now see them between the trees. They were in a small clearing just ahead, deep in heated argument. I quickly scanned the scene and counted two other men, as well as one very large dog.

At least, I thought it was a dog.

It’s large bulk suddenly lunged forward, knocking the third man to the ground and sat growling atop his chest, the second hovering near enough to give a command or two to the beast. Another, more subtle movement caught my eye and I looked up above the action to find Julia precariously perched on a branch, trembling from head to toe.

A startled cry escaped my lips before I could stop it and Ian’s hand clamped hard over my mouth. Jamie spotted her moments after I did and the attention of the men thankfully turned to him, rather than to me. I pried Ian’s hand off my face as Jamie swung himself into the tree, speaking to our daughter as he carefully, but quickly, neared her.

He reached Julia in short order, then hesitated, seeming to calculate a way down before carefully coaxing her towards him. I couldn’t make out her words, but her desperate tone sent shockwaves of agony through me as she inched closer and closer to Jamie and finally took hold of him.

She flung her good arm around his neck and wrapped her bare legs around him, literally hanging onto him for dear life. My hand gripped Ian’s as we watched them descend branch by branch, helpless to assist Jamie in his climb. He paused about halfway down to help her get a better grip on him and I wondered how she’d managed to climb up all that way using only one arm.

My gaze traveled to the man on the ground, pinned beneath the bulk of the dog. It was obvious that he’d been the cause of her climb, but who was he? Was he one of the men who’d kidnapped her?

Was he… Randall?

I could see the man’s face clearly in profile and he looked nothing like any of the Randall relations I’d met, in either century. His mouth was all wrong, the set of his eyes far too deep to be related to either of the men I feared him to be.

Julia’s face was more visible now above Jamie’s shoulder and I could see she had her eyes screwed up tight, the curls around her brow were plastered against her skin with the cold sweat of physical pain and fear. Her lips moved against his ear and I watched Jamie nod, his left arm squeezing her tight in a reassuring hug as he stepped down onto the next limb.

They only had a handful more to go, but I could stand the distance no longer. I surged forward into the clearing and to the base of the mighty oak. Ian scrambled after me, moving to place himself between the unknown men and the tree, guarding us against any threat until Jamie and Julia were safely on the ground.

“Watch your step, Fraser,” the man spoke from the ground behind me, his threat bristling the hair at the back of my neck even though he was securely pinned beneath a good eight stone of dog. “The last one’s a doozy.”

Jamie stiffened above me and hesitated on the branch, just within arm’s reach. My fingers brushed his boot, curled around his ankle to tell him I was there. He’d know of my presence, of course, he always did, but I felt better just the same.

“I don’t believe you’re in a position to make such ambiguous statements, Jones,” the other man commented, giving name to the prisoner. “If I didn’t know any better, I might interpret it as a threat… and I wouldn’t recommend threatening him.”

Jamie and Julia continued their descent without mishap or conversation, the two of them moving as one down the tree. The dog, as well as his master, had response enough to the goings on behind me and I trusted Ian to warn me, should the captive be freed. My palm traveled up Jamie’s leg as he stepped onto the next limb and I reached out my other hand to touch Julia’s foot, which I could now reach. She started, apparently unaware of my presence, but didn’t pull away as she held on tight to her father. Inch by inch, they drew nearer, and I found I could breathe again. I took great gulps of the brisk night air, beginning to tremble with cold and relief as my wits slowly returned to me.

One final step, and they were on the ground.

Jamie gently set Julia on her feet and I fiercely gathered her into my arms, my hand pressing her head against my chest. She was shaking too, small sounds of terror escaping her perused lips. They were white with the effort it took to keep them closed, to keep her pain inside.

“Take her home,” Jamie bent his head.

I nodded, accepting the warmth of his presence and inquiring out of my intense need to know what the bloody hell was going on, “Who is he?”

“I dinna ken,” his voice was low, for my ears alone, “but I will soon enough.”

Julia squirmed between us and Jamie stepped away, motioning towards his mount with one hand as he prodded me in that general direction with the other. That he was anxious to have her away from the man in question was obvious, but why?

“Jamie, what—“

He shook his head, adding, “Dinna let her out of your sight, Sassenach.”

…  
Julia.

I'm trapped.

Again.

With a sniff, I snuggled closer to Rollo and buried my face in his fur. I didn’t want to see the walls of the cabin, didn’t want to hear Claire try to awkwardly make up for her decade of absence. She had given birth to me, that much was clear, but she was NOT my mother and never would be. My hot tears trickled into the coarse hair of my companion and onto his skin, prompting him to turn his head and lick my ear in some canine form of consolation.

I could hear Claire moving about behind me, doing who knows what. She’d given up on conversation a short while ago and been in constant motion ever since. A small, lumpy mattress had materialized from beneath the large bed in the corner, her first order of business, and left me to assume that’s where I’d be spending the night.

A noise from outside the cabin set my pillow on high alert and low growl vibrated against my cheek. I sat up, looking towards the door as Claire almost ran to it, her hands hovering over the heavy bar that kept it securely shut. Rollo leapt from my side with a warning woof to investigate, leaving me suddenly cold. Standing, I moved closer to the fire as the dog began to bark in earnest. The mule in his pasture outside joined in and there was such a commotion that I couldn’t tell just what exactly was going on out there.

“Hush ye wee fiend!” One voice finally boomed above the racket, speaking, presumably, to Rollo, “Tis only me.”

Claire flung back the bolt and opened the door, letting Rollo out and Jamie in. He shut the door behind him, but didn’t lock it as the situation at hand had apparently been dealt with. The two of them began to converse in low tones near the door, their backs to me. Obviously, neither saw the need to fill me in on the situation. My frustration only grew as I moved closer to them, finding their exclusion unsurprising, but still insulting.

“Dinna fash,” I heard him assure her, “he’s tied to the oak at the edge of the dooryard.”

“You tied him to a tree?!”

I’d spoken without meaning to, intending to stay in the shadows and learn what I could, but, instead, they both turned to me in surprise.

Jamie grinned, “Oh, aye, although t’wasna my idea. The lad and Ian trussed him up quite nicely. He willna be goin’ anywhere.”

“Did he tell you anything?” Claire pressed.

“Aye, tha’ he did, but…” he looked from her to me and back again, “I dinna ken wha’ he means.”

“What did he say?” I blurted, inching closer.

The door opened again, stopping his explanation before he had a chance to begin it, and gave entrance to Ian and the person previously referred to as “the lad.” I thought he might be the same age as Ian or maybe more Max’s age: a teenager who desperately wanted to be considered a full grown man.

“I do apologize for not introducing myself earlier, but with all the excitement, I… well, that is to say,” the newcomer stammered before he abruptly stuck his hand out towards Jamie, who shook it warily, “My name is Thomas Pruitt and it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

He snorted, raising a brow as he let go, “You seem to ken a great deal about my family for someone who hasna made my acquaintance before.”

The boy — Thomas, it seemed his name was — shifted uncomfortably under the intense scrutiny both of my birth parents were giving him. I didn’t think that even the best Russian spy could remain unbroken by that level of silent interrogation.

“Yes, well… I can explain. You see, it has to do with the Stones. They, um, they don’t work the way you think they do.”


	22. A Brave New World

“It has to do with the Stones. They, um, don’t work like you think they do,” Thomas explained.

“Am I to presume by that absurd statement that you’ve been through them yourself?”

The boy flinched, whether it was from my words or the look he was receiving from Jamie, I didn’t know.

“No, not exactly,” he shook his head. “Not as you have, anyway.”

“What on earth does that mean?” I exploded.

Thomas sighed in frustration, “The Stones… they’re a portal. A passageway from one time to another, yes?”

Jamie’s assenting aye was strained, it’s tone a good deal higher than his usual deep register.

“But between the doors — in the hallway, so to speak — there’s another space, another existence. It’s outside of time, yet always in the middle of it. You can travel through it, because of your genetic makeup, but you can’t stay inside it… you have to keep moving.”

“It was so loud,” Julia whispered.

I heard the echo of their screams, the wails of the Travelers stuck inside the Stones as I reached for Jamie’s band. He took hold of it firmly, his touch anchoring my feet to the here and now.

“Yes!” Thomas nodded excitedly, “There are Beings who live inside the Stones. They can speak and travel inside and out of the World Within.”

“Human beings? Within the Stones?” she inquired, still in a hush.

He frowned at this, “No, they aren’t from here.”

“No’ from this time, ye mean,” Jamie clarified.

“Not from any time,” he explained. “They exist outside of time within the Stones.”

“But you said they can travel out of them,” I stated, gooseflesh beginning to rise on my arms.

Thomas nodded, but didn’t speak.

“How?” Jamie prodded when it became obvious he wasn’t going to continue.

In answer, Thomas pulled an amulet out from under his shirt and took it off, handing it to Jamie. I leaned closer to examine it, then backpedaled immediately as I caught the faint but familiar hum of the Stones.

“It won’t hurt you,” the boy assured quickly. “It won’t have any effect on you, actually.”

I crossed my arms and tucked my hands securely into my armpits, ensuring that I would touch nothing.

“Oh, aye? Forgive me, but I’ll no’ be takin’ your word for it,” Jamie muttered as he firmly handed it back.

Thomas had the audacity to laugh as he gladly received it, “I don’t blame you. It is a bit hard to swallow all at once.”

A Scottish, noncommittal umhmm resonated from my husband as our daughter began to process all of this out loud.

“Wait, so… you can travel somewhere just by touching that?”

“More or less,” he shrugged.

Her jaw dropped, “You’re from inside the Stones, then?”

“Yes,” he stated simply, not bothering to explain himself.

“Is… he from there too?”

Julia inched closer to me as she spoke, a response I was sure she was unaware of.

“Jones?” He clarified, “No, he isn’t. He’s a Traveler like you and your mother, but he isn’t from Within.”

“What about Randall?”

Jamie’s question, the utterance of the name of the man who’d been responsible for all of this, set a chill to the air that was palpable.

Thomas nodded, “He is from Within, but not who you’d think him to be.”

“Then who the hell is he?”

“Well,” the boy screwed up his face at my question as he began to pace before the fire, “that’s where it gets complicated. The Greeks called him Hades and the Norse, Loki, but he’s really something else entirely. Not a god, in any sense of the word, definitely, but immortal nonetheless.”

“Jack Randall canna be immortal, he is dead.”

A cold fist clamped around my heart as Jamie spat the words with enough venom to pause the boy’s movements and turn every eye to him.

“He was killed at Culloden, yes,” Thomas amended.

Julia’s brows furrowed in confusion, “Then how did he kidnap me?”

“Jack Randall didn’t,” he rubbed a hand tiredly over his eyes, “and before you ask it, neither did Frank Randall.”

“Then who did?” I asked for the second time, quickly losing patience with the boy’s round about way of answering things.

A long suffering sigh escaped his lips, “We call him The Diablerie.”

“The what?” Julia asked incredulously.

“The Diablerie?” I scoffed. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

He narrowed his eyes at me, “That’s rich coming from the woman who was married to him for twenty nine years.”

In a move neither the boy or I saw coming, Jamie had him pinned against the cabin wall, his forearm across Thomas’ chest.

“Ye willna speak to my wife in such a manner,” he growled. “Apologize an’ explain yourself.”

“I’m so very sorry for my disrespect, Madam Fraser. I spoke out of annoyance and I should not have done so,” Thomas gushed, glancing quickly at me before returning his gaze to Jamie.

“He — The Diablerie — that is, can take on many forms or personas in a specific timeline, but he cannot continue to use one once that body dies. Jack Randall and Frank Randall are dead, so, therefore, neither could have kidnapped Julia… but Jonathan Crawford could and did.”

…

A loud sniff came from the pallet at the foot of the bed and I buried my face in Jamie’s chest, unable to stem my tears that flowed with our daughter’s. His arms came around me and held me close as we listened to her cry herself to sleep. I’d offered my comfort to her again and again, only to be refused, and, just now, I couldn’t bear to be rejected again. My daughter was alive — a mere ten feet from me — but was as unreachable as she’d been for the last twenty years.

Her breathing soon evened out, settling into a rhythm that bespoke a fitful slumber and Jamie’s whisper crooned in my ear, “She’s here an’ she’s safe, mo nighean donn… the rest will come wi’ time.”

I sat up, pulling away from him and crawled to the end of the bed. I peered over the edge, trying to make out her sleeping form in the dark. I needed to see her, to reassure myself that she was indeed here and safe. Jamie wordlessly joined me, pulling me onto his lap as we watched her sleep together.

“Why, Jamie?” I murmured. “Why now? Why here?”

He sighed, a deep resonance that settled me further into his embrace, “I dinna ken.”

“But what I do ken, Sassenach,” he continued many moments later, “is that I love you. Everything else… it doesna matter so much, as long as you are at my side and our daughters are safe.”

I tipped my head back to look up at him as his fingers worked their way through my curls. His kiss was brief, but everything I needed from him and more. He untangled my soul as dexterously as he did my hair, gently separating each spiral of fear and uncertainty with his words and with his touch.

“And they are safe, mo chridhe,” he vowed, “Brianna in her own time and Julia in ours.”

…

I woke to the sound of someone running into something in the dark. The mumbled expletives in two different octaves that followed told me that both of my birth parents were awake and up. I cracked one eye open to see what was happening, but could make out nothing more than barely illuminated figures moving frantically about the cabin.

Blinking rapidly, I groggily inquired, “What’s going on?”

“Stay within, bolt the door and dinna come near it,” a deep Scottish burr commanded me from the shadows.

“Why?” I frowned as I sat up, “Where are you—“

A scream from outside the cabin cut me off, sending the both of them out the door, slamming it shut as they went. Goosebumps rose on my arms as the sound of it echoed in my ears. It’d been barely human, a screech so desperate that it must have been some sort of dying animal and not a person…

Right?

Completely ignoring my direct order, I got up from my makeshift bed and crept towards the door. It was completely dark, so I moved along with my good arm outstretched, my feet shuffling along the floor. I bumped into the table on my way and winced as the edge of the bench collided with my shin.

Stepping around it, it was only a few more paces to my destination. I felt for the latch and slowly flipped it. I wasn’t worried about the sound it made, I was sure they were far from the door, but I continued to move at a snail’s pace, should any sudden movement catch their eye. I inched the door open and peered through.

The deep purple of dawn’s early light allowed me to see the cluster of people standing near the base of a big tree, assumably where Thomas had tied Jones. I could make out Ian’s blond head and felt a measure of relief that it wasn’t him that was hurt. Thomas was there beside him, so that left my kidnapper as the one screaming in the dark.

A shiver ran up my spine as I realized they were all completely engrossed in whatever catastrophe had befallen him and, if I was careful, no one would notice me slip away. I shut the door again and made my way back to the bed, where my backpack was. My brain envisioned my route up the Ridge, quickly guiding me to the place where Jones had found me and continuing on.

I could do this.

I could get back home.

I was out of the cabin and around the corner in one smooth motion. Pausing to listen for any sign that they’d saw me, I let out a sigh of relief as nothing changed. No one said my name, no one was coming this way. I quickly scanned the forest to get my bearings and left the clearing behind.


	23. lèirsinn / Vision

Bright, blinding light shone directly into my eyes. I brought my hands to my face, trying to block it, but it persisted. I turned in every direction to avoid it, but it found me. Falling to my knees, I buried my face in my arms and huddled into a ball. This proved ineffective and I flattened out, lying prone on top of something smooth and as cold as ice. The surface smelled of industrial cleaner and blood, a dichotomous mixture that I’d only encountered in an operating theater.

A low mechanical hum broke the absolute silence and a rhythmic wheezing sound accompanying it. The combination was quite unnerving and I tried to move away from it, pushing myself across the floor until I met the wall. Sitting up with my back pressed against it I blinked rapidly as the light began to dim, revealing my surroundings.

I was, in fact, in an operating theater, but not like the ones I was accustomed to at Boston General. It was much, much larger… nearly three times the size of those I’d ever operated in before. The room boasted an observation window high above me and a great throng of doctors and nurses mingled around the table at the center of the room, obscuring it’s patient from my view. I couldn’t see the machine either, perhaps it was on the other side of the table, but it’s purpose was now clear.

It was a heart and lung bypass.

They were performing open heart surgery.

I could hear snippets of their conversation, but I couldn’t fully grasp what exactly it was they were doing. Curiosity warmed my extremities, urging me to get up off of the floor and I did so clumsily. None of the people before me took any notice and merely continued towards their goal, whatever it was. Staggering forward, I neared the surgeons, trying to ascertain what exactly was going on and why on earth I was in an unfamiliar operating theater in nothing but my shift. My mind raced to connect the dots, to fill in the blanks with each directive that was given.

Pulmonary infundibular stenosis.

Overriding aorta.

Ventricular septal defect.

Right ventricular hypertrophy.

This was tetralogy of Fallot.

It was the sort of intricate surgery only performed at Johns Hopkins and the University of Minnesota, and even then the success rate was low … its complexity and risk factors were far too high for Boston General. I’d read articles about the procedure and the successes Lillehei was having, but I’d never saw it performed myself.

As a rule, I avoided anything related to pulmonary congenital defects when I could. Sometimes it couldn’t be helped and I steeled myself for the onslaught of memories that always came with it. Julia’s blue lips, the sleepless nights wondering if my baby would see the dawn, the last time I held her close in my arms. It was the only area of my profession that I disliked, or, to be more accurate, hated to the very marrow of my bones.

Peering around the shoulder of the anesthetist in front of me, I could just barely make out the form of a small child. The more I concentrated, the more definite the patient became. I could see gloved hands working in steady, surgical perfection, quickly but efficiently repairing the patient’s congenital defects. The child’s head was almost visible in front of me and I rose up on my toes to better study their face.

An unruly tuft of auburn hair peeped out from where their hair had been carefully tucked back, their pale skin in striking contrast to such vivid color. My heart dropped to the floor as I recognized the profile of the child’s nose and brow.

It was Julia.

A sound unlike any that had ever escaped my lips echoed around me, sending pulsating, almost visible shockwaves across the room. It’s reverberations collided with the medical personnel and they disappeared, leaving me alone with my daughter. The final vestiges of my cry rid her of any sign of the operation that had been underway just moments before.

I stepped closer, all inhibitions now gone, and bent over her sweet face. My hands cupped her pale cheeks and I watched as a rosy glow lit her skin, a flicker of a smile tugged at her lips. She stirred, but didn’t wake as I pressed my forehead to hers, breathing in the scent of my healthy child.

“You’re alright,” I crooned, assuring myself with my words as much as I was her. “It’s alright, I’m right here.”

Her eyelids fluttered, her lashes brushing against my cheeks. I lifted my head, just enough for me to see her face and clear, blue eyes met mine as recognition took hold. She sighed contentedly as I pressed a kiss to her brow, her nose wrinkling in that way I so loved as she grinned up at me.

Her chin tiled and she gave me a kiss on the end of my nose.

“Love Mim,” she whispered as her eyes closed once more.

Before I could tell her how much I loved her in return, Jamie’s voice called out my name.

“Claire!”

My head snapped up.

Even though I knew that Julia and I were here alone, my heart sought my husband. I turned and looked for him, his name on my lips. The empty, white operating theater taunted me, snickering in silence. A movement — a sudden flash of blue — caught my eye and I looked towards the observation window.

Two women, one elderly and the other somewhere around middle aged, stood there, gazing down at me. They were obviously related, bearing striking resemblance to each other… and to someone I knew. I couldn’t put my finger on it, couldn’t put a name to the face, but I felt like I’d met the older woman before.

Mrs Graham.

She looked very much like Mrs Graham.

What was her granddaughter’s name? The one I’d met at the manse with Bree… Flora?

Fiona.

Was that Fiona at her side?

Suddenly, Jamie was there before me, his face inches from mine. I could feel his arms around me, the bed beneath me and in a moment I knew it had all been a dream. I closed my eyes, squeezing them shut in a vain attempt to return to the world where my child was alive and well.

“No! No, Jamie!” I pushed against him, fighting against the darkness of the cabin’s interior, trying to find my way back to the light of that room.

“Shh, mo chridhe, ‘twas only a dream,” he held me tightly against his chest. “I’m right here.”

“Julia,” I whimpered, hoping that speaking her name aloud would somehow keep her alive.

“She’s safe. She’s here.”

My eyes snapped open, “What?”

“Twas a dream,” Jamie calmly repeated into the darkness, his tone a stark contrast to his heartbeat against my cheek. “Julia’s here, she’s safe.”

The events of the last twenty four hours flashed before my eyes, superimposing themselves over top of the image of Julia on the operating table from my dream. They blurred together into a jumbled mess and left me weeping uncontrollably, trembling in my husband’s arms.

“Oh God, Jamie.”

He didn’t speak again, only nodded and continued his rhythmic massaging of my back. His touch slowly brought me back, gently lifted me out of my grief. I sniffed and he tugged the edge of the bed sheet, offering it up in place of a handkerchief as his thumb wiped away the tears on my face.

“She’s really here?” I hiccuped.

“Aye, mo nighean donn.”

Every emotion that was pulsing through my veins was present in his voice. The confusion, absolute wonder, fear, and joy were as tangible as Jamie was beside me. I could feel the sharp, jagged edges of the concern for Julia’s safety, the warm, smooth plains of the delight in her presence in every word. I looked up, needing to see his face above mine in the darkness.

“Was it the same?” Jamie inquired gently, his smile weak. He knew the pain of recurring nightmares all too well and he’d comforted me often when I woke from mine.

I’d had them off and on when Bree was young, but they’d waned as she’d grown older. Dreams of the days just before Culloden, of the hellish nights spent in uncertainty at Lallybroch. I had others too, where my subconscious ran wild, placing Jamie and Julia in bizarre, modern scenarios.

“She was at the hospital again,” I swallowed hard. I’d had many dreams of this sort since returning to Jamie and learning our daughter had lived, yet never quite like this. “They were operating on her this time… on her heart.”

But before I could tell him more, a scream — the likes of which I’d only heard on the field of battle and it’s direct aftermath — came from outside the cabin, setting the both of us into motion.

“Jesus H Roosevelt Christ,” I hissed as my shin collided painfully with a low bench by the hearth. 

Where the hell were my shoes?

Damn them, I’d just go without.

A crash sounded from somewhere near the door and I knew Jamie was having about as much success as I was.

“Ifrinn,” he grumbled, “damned buttons.”

“What’s going on?” a groggy voice inquired.

Oh, God.

What if Thomas’ alliance had been a ruse? What if he’d appeared only to buy whoever the hell he was time to journey to the ridge? The boy had disclosed neither the rogue’s location, nor his intents, only another name to call him by and quite the story as to how he connected with everything.

“Stay within, bolt the door, and dinna come near it,” Jamie’s tone was insistent and urgent, but held none of the panic that I felt spring to life inside me.

“Why?” Julia asked again.

In answer, another scream ricochet through the cabin.

I ran out the door after Jamie, mumbling something to Julia about doing as she was told, and slammed it behind me. The sun had only just begun to rise, its early light painting everything in dusty blue and somber purple. Two figures were standing near a tree and turned at the noise we’d made. I prayed that one of them was Ian, alive and whole.

“Watch your step,” my nephew called out, negating that worry. “The wee beast could still be near.”

The what?

“Wha’ happened?” Jamie was at their side now, staring down at the base of the tree, where, presumably, Thomas had tied up Jones, who was the source of the scream.

“Twas the biggest snake I’ve ever seen, Uncle!”

Fuck.

Here I was barefoot and a bloody fucking snake could come slithering past at any moment.

I’d encountered more than my fair share in my journey through the Caribbean, not to mention the ones I’d stared down in the desert with Uncle Lamb, and I’d yet to meet one I liked. Hate was a better word, but hardly a fitting descriptor for my feelings towards the loathsome things.

Whatever pause the announcement of an encroaching snake had given me disappeared as I caught sight of the man in question. They’d untied him and he lay on his back in the dirt, writhing much like the venomous beast that had bitten him, moments before.

I surged forward, my knees and shins colliding painfully with the uneven turf, a rock nudging my left patella in a direction that it did not want to go.

“Where?” I demanded of the three men standing immobile behind me, making no move to help their captive. “Where was he bitten?”

Jamie and Ian stared dumbly down at me, their mouths slightly agape, but Thomas stammered, “His… on his, ah, right arm, ma’am.”

I shoved Jones’ sleeve up and easily found the mark just above his wrist.

This was not from a rattlesnake, nor any that I’d seen before.

The bite was already inflamed, the puncture marks oozed some sort of yellow puss and a deep, purple bruise was beginning to form around it. I pressed down with my thumb as hard as I could just above it, attempting to localize the venom and not allow it to spread up his arm and into his circular system as much as possible.

“Do you need a belt, Sassenach?”

“No,” I shook my head as I motioned him forward, “but another hand would be helpful. Press down here as hard as you can.”

Jamie was at my side immediately and did as told, wrapping his hand around Jones’ forearm. Suddenly, something cold and smooth brushed against the bare skin of the bottoms of my feet. I gripped Jamie’s arm as I realized what it was, managing to squeak out the word snake as I tried to stay as still as possible.

He flinched and swore under his breath as the head of the beast appeared near Jones’ foot. It was thicker than my arm and a mahogany color that allowed it to blend almost seamlessly into the ground. The serpent slid along Jones’ leg, stopping about mid thigh and, quick as lightning, bit him. I screamed, backpedaling away from the monster and it’s victim, but Jamie kept his wits about him and grabbed hold of the beast by its head, clamping it’s mouth shut with both hands just as it let go of Jones.

“I, ah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you” Thomas commented uneasily.

The viper writhed in Jamie’s grasp, thrashing against him with the strength of a grown man. Predator and prey fought against each other in a primal battle for control and both were determined to seize it.

“You have a better idea, then?”

This came out as a sort of groaning grunt as Jamie struggled to keep his grip. If he let go, he’d surely be bitten and it was that thought that had me wrapping my own hands over-top his in an attempt to keep the beast’s mouth shut.

“Well, yes,” the boy admitted hesitantly from somewhere above me, “if you let go of him, he’ll leave.”

“Are ye daft, man? He’d surely bite the both o’ them!” Ian burst.

The snake suddenly began to growl, a deep, almost hollow sound that should not have come from this sort of animal, and quickly negated any and all conversation. Jamie and I simultaneously let go as it began to vibrate, the beast’s body pulsating with the resonance of the sound. It moved away from us, lifting more than half of its body off the ground and stood erect, taller than Jamie or any man I’d ever met.

Swaying slightly, it’s eyes shone down on us, an unsettling, vibrant green. With an exaggerated shudder, it promptly sprouted four legs, each one with a massive paw at the end. It eased itself down to stand upon them and it’s tail shrunk drastically as it’s head grew to nearly five times what it had been just a moment before.

The beast now stood before us, looking rather like a giant dog with scales. Just as the thought crossed my mind, it shook itself — very much like a dog does after getting terribly wet — and thick, black fur burst forth over every inch of its body. It quickly glanced towards Thomas, it’s mouth open and tongue lolling out as it panted, and then took off into the underbrush, leaving us to gape after it.

“What in the bloody hell was that?” I spat once I found my voice.

“Who, more accurately,” Thomas corrected gently. “That was Sampson.”

Jamie rocked back on his heels, shaking his head, “Tha’ was no’ your bear of a dog.”

“To start with, he isn’t my dog,” Thomas insisted.

“Then who’s is he?” Ian asked in wonder.

“Julia’s.”

“What?!” I cried.

“But you should probably follow him… if you want to catch up with her, that is,” he added.

Jamie’s voice was low as he brought himself to his full height and towered over Thomas, “My daughter is safely within the cabin and I dinna care for you insinuating that she is anywhere else, lad.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” Thomas sighed, unfazed by my husband’s bulk. “She’s just snuck out and is headed for the Stones.”


	24. My Whole Life Long

Jamie.

Again. She’d run away again.

I’d long since fallen behind that beast of a dog, but his path was easy enough to follow. A great swath of bare earth lay in his wake, as though he’d drug a fallen tree behind him as he ran through the forest, giving my horse and I a level path in which to gallop after.

The sun was well above the horizon now and it shone directly in my eyes. I squinted as I rode along, blinking rapidly. Any of the bluffs above me could house the blasted stones. How would I know if I’d passed it, blindly following the path of a monster that could change shape in the blink of an eye? I shivered at the recollection of the feel of it between my hands, the remembrance of it’s cold scales made my palms clammy. Wiping them on my breeks, I tried to rid myself of the sensation and turned my focus, instead, to the situation at hand:

Julia was headed for the Stones.

I urged my mount on as we took a sharp turn and started to climb the ridge. The mare faltered as it became too steep and I quickly dismounted, hurriedly tying the lead to a sturdy branch of a tree. Now on foot, I picked my way up the incline, grabbing onto anything I could to hasten my ascent. The summit was now in sight and I propelled myself over a boulder and into the clearing.

My daughter’s name burst from my lips as I surged forward, past the outer monoliths of the cursed ring, and into the space between. A low growl echoed my call and I caught sight of Julia and the beast, his furry bulk between her and the clefted, center stone.

She spun around at the sound of my voice, her eyes wide. Desperation was painted across her cheeks and its rosy hue contrasted starkly with her pale skin. Her shoulders bobbed with each ragged breath, the warmth of it making a billow of steam with every exhale.

“Stop, a leannan,” I pleaded.

Julia shook her head mutely and turned away from me, dashing around the side of the pillar with him right on her tail.

“No!” I screamed as I came around the corner in time to watch her reach forward, her fingertips a breath away from touching it.

But before she could, the animal grabbed hold of her overcoat with his great teeth and tackled her to the ground, pinning her down. His massive head swiveled to face me as I collapsed beside them and he immediately climbed off of her, positioning himself to be, once again, between her and the stone.

I gathered her into my arms and a strangled cry escaped my lips as her head rolled limp into my shoulder, her skin as pale as snow. Catching sight of the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest, I begged her to wake up. She frowned at the sound of my voice and shook her head, trying to untangle herself from the powerful web of time that she’d been ensnared in.

“Aye, that’s the way,” I swallowed down the vivid memory of her placid, pallid form in my arms at a different ring of standing stones across the sea and clutched her tighter against my chest, tucking her head beneath my chin. She trembled against me as she began to wake and I tried to soothe her, the way I had so many times before.

“Shh, I’ve got ye,” I crooned as I rocked back and forth, “dinna fash.”

Her eyelids flickered and she blinked up at me in confusion, which was quickly replaced with pure, unadulterated anger. Pain knifed across my heart as my daughter found only discomfort in my embrace. She met my gaze unflinchingly as she demanded, “Let me go.”

I reluctantly loosened my grip on her — somehow knowing that the shaggy form beside me wouldn’t let her near the stone — and she sat up, pushing herself away from me. The beast shifted with her, countering her movements to place himself more directly in front of her and fixed his gaze on her face. She looked between him and me, as if weighing her options, then let out a frustrated huff.

“I guess I’m stuck here, then.”

Her words were stated so very much like her mother that I couldn’t help but smile past the tears that threatened to fall.

“Aye, you are.”

…

We picked our way back down the bluff a short time later and found the horse readily enough. I secured Julia’s pack to the saddle before hoisting her up, remembering the book that had fallen out the day before. My curiosity got the better of me and I broke the growing silence between us as I mounted.

“The wee book in your satchel… it fell out right before I found you in the tree,” I started awkwardly. “It wasna mine to read, but I did.”

Julia tensed against me, whether from my confession or my presence behind her, I didn’t know. Deciding to continue, now that I’d begun, I added, “The tale was about you, about how you… how you were lost to us.”

She nodded her head in acknowledgement of this fact, but didn’t speak.

“We… your mother and… sister,” the words seemed to stick in my throat, the use of these familial titles new to my lips, “we were in it too, with all the correct names… even Lallybroch.”

The paper images that Claire had brought of Brianna — the daughter I’d never met — swam before my eyes, just as they looked before they were lost to the sea. Every one of them was permanently engraved in my memory, each detail as real as they’d been when I’d held the portraits in my hands. Then the soft brush strokes of the book’s illustrations painted over the lines of her nose and brow, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction, creating a moment that would never be.

The four of us together.

“Yeah?” Julia’s gentle question reminded me of the blessed reality I did have.

One word was all I could manage.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she lifted her good shoulder in a half shrug, remarking, “my granny made it up.”

My brows rose.

“Did she?”

“She said her granny told her the story of the Woman of Balnain when she was growing up.”

I stood upon the hill, and the wind did rise…

My arm involuntarily tightened around my daughter and she squirmed.

“Tha mi duilich, a leannan,” I murmured instantly, loosening my grip only slightly.

“You’ve heard the story then too?”

Her ready response in my native tongue warmed my heart. Someone would have had to have kept it alive in her, or she would have forgotten it long ago. Maybe it was this grandmother she spoke of.

“Aye, that I have.”

“Granny said she knew a woman who disappeared and they never figured out where she went,” Julia continued. “She would make up all these stories about how my birth parents had been stolen away by the faeries.”

“Did you believe her?”

She gave me the other half of her previous shrug, “I did until I met someone else who’d been adopted.”

“And their parents hadn’t been stolen away by the wee folk, aye?” I surmised.

Julia shook her head slowly.

“But I guess I’d always hoped it was true. Lallybroch is a real place, after all… why couldn’t the rest of it be real?”

My heart squeezed at the mention of my home, the estate my father had built with his own hands.

“Have you been there?” she asked innocently.

“Aye,” I swallowed hard. “Have you?”

I could feel her smile, though I couldn’t see it, as she eagerly answered, “Oh aye!”

…

Claire.

Thomas had thought of everything. The burgeoning parcel he’d handed over was, to my surprise, a complete wardrobe for Julia. Petticoats, shawls, and woolen cloaks ensured that she would not be cold come winter and shoes, skirts, and bodices would give her the look of the eighteenth century child she should be. A few hair ribbons completed the ensemble, as well as a ridiculous looking bonnet.

She held it aloft with two fingers and glared at the offending headwear, “Do I really have to wear all of this?”

“Well, not that,” I acquiesced with a commiserating grimace and took it from her, handing her a shift in its stead. “This one first.”

Julia turned her disdainful gaze to me, crossing her arms in defiance and leaving the item of clothing dangling from my proffered hand. This was how it had been from the moment she dismounted from the horse with Jamie: she was here and would stay, but under protest.

“Look, love, I kn—“

“Don’t call me that.”

Her voice was low, but steady and determined. Her eyes flung jagged barbs across the distance between us, frigid icicles knifing their way into my heart as she snatched the shift away and turned her back. I followed suit, giving her privacy and working very hard at keeping my tears at bay.

I tipped my head back and stared up at the ceiling as I took great, gulping breaths. I could hear her shuffling about and desperately wished I knew what to say.

“What’s next, then?”

I turned at her question and rummaged about the pile of clothing for the corset I had caught sight of just a few moments before. Finding it, I looked up and the floor fell out of from underneath me for there, poking above the loose collar of her shift, was her surgical scar.

I pressed my hands over my mouth to stem the cry of my heart, but it was too late. A sob burst from lips as I sagged into the table. Julia’s hands immediately lifted to cover the healed wound, her face crumbling into a look of such vulnerability that it sent my knees buckling and I sat down hard on the bench beside me. I couldn’t breathe as everything came crashing down on top of my shoulders.

This was real.

A figment of my imagination no longer, the stark reality that my baby had been alone in that operating theater — her chest splayed wide and completely at the surgeons mercy — was there before me in a precise line of scar tissue. I hadn’t been there to hold her hand or smooth her brow as she’d healed. I hadn’t been there to watch her regain the health and vitality her condition had stolen from her since her borning cry.

It hadn’t been by choice, but I wasn’t there… I had left her. I had left her alone to fend for herself when she’d needed me the most. I had left her to grow up thinking that I hadn’t loved her, to grapple with the false assumption that she’d not been wanted.

“I’m sorry,” I gushed. “I’m so sorry… I didn’t… I couldn’t…”

Julia’s gaze flicked towards the door — hoping that Jamie would come in and tend to me, no doubt — but then she did something that I never saw coming. She let her hands drop as she walked around the table and sat down on the bench beside me, her eyes brimming with her own tears.

“What did I call you? Before…” her voice trembled a little as her shoulder brushed against mine.

“Mim,” one corner of my mouth lifted at the first olive branch she was offering. “You called me Mim.”

She nodded, but made no move to shy away from me or my tears.

“It doesn’t hurt, you know,” her fingers flitted along her incision, stopping far closer to her navel that I expected it to go.

“Good,” I managed to get past the lump in my throat. The site shouldn’t be giving her pain, not from the looks of how well it had healed. “Have I told you that I’m a surgeon?”

Her head snapped to the side to look at me, her mouth slightly agape.

“In my time, that is,” I added, unsure of what she thought I meant. “In Boston.”

She paled at this and clarified, “You lived in Boston? Where?”

An uneasy, apprehensive feeling replaced that of despair in the pit of my stomach.

“We moved to Cambridge… to Furey Street in 1948,” I explained hesitantly. Not because I didn’t want her to know, but because I suddenly felt convicted of living another life apart from her in the same city, separated by only a few decades. “I was a surgeon at Boston General and I came here — to this time — in 1969.”

“Which house?” Julia’s voice was barely above a whisper and she looked as though she could be knocked over with a feather.

No, she couldn’t have.

“124,” I recited from memory and watched as my daughter slowly began to panic.

“No,” she insisted and got up from her place beside me. “That’s my house.”

Julia ran to the other side of the room, dumping the contents of her knapsack onto her bed as she plucked up a book. This in hand, she stormed back to me and all but threw it at me before collapsing back down upon the bench, words tumbling from her lips at a speed that I could barely keep up with.

“This is ridiculous! Why does everything keep connecting? It’s supposed to be a stupid, make believe bedtime story, not what actually happened! And how is it all even possible to begin with? It’s not like people can just magically come and go through time as they please! I feel like I’m stuck in some Disney princess movie,” she exploded.

“Whats next? Are you going to tell me I’m the chosen one, born to save the world and — oh, by the way — here’s your talking animal sidekick? I mean, c’mon, let’s just be realistic here! Stuff like this doesn’t happen in real life!”

I couldn’t help but smile at her tirade, not finding much fault in what she was saying for I’d felt very much the same when I’d landed unceremoniously in 1743. She’d paused to catch her breath and I took the moment to actually look at the book in my hands.

“What’s this?” I asked as disquiet surged within me.

She frowned, commenting, “It would be easier if you just read it.”

Opening the book, I flipped to the dedication page and stopped cold.

To Claire, Brianna, Julia, and Jamie: May you find your happily ever after outside of these pages. With love, Fiona. 

“Fiona Graham?” I looked incredulously at Julia.

She rose one brow in amusement — an expression so much like her father’s that I could have cried — and muttered, “That’s not the craziest thing… just wait, it gets better.”

Still stuck on this, the figures from my dream flashed before my eyes, “You know Fiona Graham?”

“She’s my granny,” Julia nodded, then her gaze fell as she corrected herself, “or she was.”

Not wanting to press the point, I turned back to the book and flipped to the first page of the story, reading:

Once upon a time in the kingdom of Lallybroch, there lived a noble king James and his lovely queen Claire with their two daughters, Brianna and Julia. Both princesses resembled their father with their auburn curls and blue eyes, but each were individual and had their mother’s strength of character.

King James was a mighty warrior and had protected his clan from many a wild beast and foe. Lallybroch was a peaceful place because of this, where all were welcome to become just who they wanted to be.

Queen Claire was a healer whose skill was renowned throughout the land. Her touch could strengthen the weak and her words brought wisdom and confidence to her people.

Princess Brianna, the eldest of the two sisters, was tall and fair. She was almost grown and loved to explore the kingdom that would someday be hers. She knew every hill and dale, every nook and cranny of Lallybroch and could call each loyal subject by name.

Princess Julia was the delight of Lallybroch. She loved the stories and songs of her people and would perform them whenever she could. She was almost six years old, but she had a talent far beyond her years.

The week before Princess Julia’s birthday, King James announced that he would be throwing a grand ball in her honor. Everyone was invited to come to Castle Leoch to celebrate. There would be music and dancing until the early hours of the morning with enough food and drink for all… except one.

The evil sorcerer Randall had not been invited, for many years ago he had professed his love for Queen Claire and forever held a grudge against her for choosing King James instead of him. He’d captured the fair queen and her newborn daughter the first opportunity he had, holding them prisoner in his mountain fortress until the king came to save his wife and daughter. King James had banished Randall from the kingdom, but now the day of the ball arrived and he was back.

“I have come to take my vengeance upon you,” he exclaimed as he burst into the ballroom. “Eritis scindetur aeternum et missus ad extremum terrae!”

With a swoosh of his cape, Randall disappeared into the night and left the king to decipher just what his curse would entail. He gathered all of his bravest and wisest knights to help him, but it was Queen Claire who knew the meaning of the wizard’s words, for she’d read his book of spells while she was his prisoner and knew what this one would do. At the rising of the sun, the four members of the royal family would be flung to the far corners of the earth, unable to find eachother again.

The Queen couldn’t stop the curse, nor could she go with them, but she knew of a way to make sure her loved ones would be safe. She gave each of her daughters an enchanted ring that would hide them from Randall’s sight.

Then choosing the most loyal of Lallybroch’s knights to protect the princesses during the curse, she equipped them with an amulet that would allow them to travel with and guard her daughters against any danger. The mighty Sir Luke and his kind Lady Catherine would go with Princess Julia to the east, and the valiant Sir Roger would go with Princess Brianna to the west.

Dawn was beginning to paint the sky as Queen Claire held her daughters close. She gave them a final, parting kiss as she spoke a blessing over them.

May our separation be brief,  
May your memories bring joy, not grief.  
May the sun shine upon your face,  
May you walk in God’s abundant grace.  
May you have courage and strength enough  
To carry you on when things get rough.  
May my prayers and petitions  
Sustain you both in all conditions.  
My daughters, my heart and my song,

I will love you my whole life long.


End file.
